Smart home Hot behind: The interconnection of different brands is still a dream

Before CES, smart homes have been the focus of attention, but unfortunately, it did not use CES to shine. Whether Samsung, LG or Haier, Hisense, Changhong, exhibitors more focused on the display of television sets, refrigerators, washing machines and other products, such as the application of the function, for example, LG scene shows the Bestshop intelligent sweeping robot, Changhong TV can monitor the electricity consumption of home appliances, Haier display can be based on the season, Areas such as the implementation of personalized scene of the use of the air cube.

Obviously, for these home appliances giants, the intelligent appliance products have been realized, the next conceivable space is content, service and business model innovation.

And they are also trying to launch a solution to the user pain point of the smart products. When you drink, Samsung says, the cupboard knows what you're drinking, and even when you're drunk, take the initiative to fill the closet with what you like. Changhong said, you do not have to worry about the refrigerator food expired, the fridge will remind you in advance of the shelf life of food ...

But these seem very close to us, and seems very far away. Judging from the exhibition, each brand only solves the interconnection between individual brands, and different brands are difficult to control and data sharing, the fact is that a family has at least 20 or more brands of household products, if you can not achieve the interconnection between different brands, smart home still can not really landing.

Enterprise Enclosure: Build platform to achieve vertical integration

At CES, Samsung and LG out of the Smarthome, HomeChat intelligent Home System, in order to solve all the equipment interconnection, interoperability, mutual control. Including Haier, Changhong, Hisense, and so on, now realize the interconnection between their own products interoperability, for example, with the mobile phone software to have wifi function of home appliances, and even car equipment for remote control, a scene is, users in the hours before work, through the mobile phone to start air conditioning, purifier, etc.

But more users believe that mobile phone control appliances are not satisfied is just needed, users need to have more practical applications. Therefore, the vendors try to develop a variety of applications to meet user needs. In the exhibition, Changhong and the United States company Peoplepowerco together to display the intelligent home Monitoring system, can monitor the electricity consumption of electrical appliances, children's activities, etc. Samsung Smarthome can provide intelligent customer service, can inform the user at any time specific appliances need to maintain, and provide after-sale assistance services LG's fridge will automatically take pictures of food last time, allowing users to know exactly what food they need to buy in the supermarket.

To better realize the intelligent home remote control, monitoring, user interaction and other applications, enterprises scramble to start to build smart home vertical platform, whether Samsung's Smarthome, LG's HomeChat, or Haier's u+, such as intelligent home platform, began to extend its own industrial chain.

But vertical integration is not easy, for example, Changhong will be the refrigerator industry chain extension, through with supermarkets, shopping malls to cooperate, can be the user needs to buy the refrigerator food demand sent to supermarkets, supermarkets directly to the food door-to-door. But only this one business is a huge project, Changhong International Promotion Minister Wang Pure at CES said, Changhong opened this application, not only to consider channel cooperation, even logistics, services, etc. are in the layout.

At present, enterprises in the smart home vertical integration is not the same way, Samsung, LG, Haier more choose to build a smart home platform for themselves, so that more equipment manufacturers to join, and Hisense is the choice of their own individual intelligent products upgrades and interoperability, Changhong chose in the intelligent product of a function to establish an ecosystem.

Address interoperability between platforms: open protocols and interfaces are far from enough

Compared with the integration of vertical platform, the structure of intelligent home vertical platform is still unreachable. Although each enterprise has said that, the intelligent home's agreement, the interface is completely open, in order to realize each brand interconnection interoperability mutual control question, but is far from enough. "Would you like to add other brand interfaces to your product?" "At CES fair, the head of a smart home, Hisense said," Home appliances brand is now a competitive relationship, whether the product, market share, or technology is also close, who will be willing to do for others to marry clothes? ”

Wang also believes that this is a process of mutual game. "Before it is decided, companies will try to make themselves go further, rather than being integrated," he said. ”

If not a completely open intelligent home Platform, smart home landing difficult to achieve. "Unless the state establishes a uniform standard." "Wang Pure expression.

Chips, software, applications are still a problem

At present, the protagonist of Smart home is still the home appliance manufacturers, because they occupy the user's home all the household products. From the market coverage of products, Sony, Samsung, LG occupy the global television market in the first three places, in China, Haier washing machine, water heaters occupy half of the market, half of the air-conditioning market is gree occupy. Therefore, even Apple, it is difficult to through the closed system, to attract all these equipment operators. Moreover, after Google acquired Nest, a new competitor emerged.

And for these appliances, software, applications, chips are difficult. At present, smart home chips are mainly provided by Intel, Qualcomm, Italy-France Semiconductor, MediaTek and so on. At CES, the company revealed that it would integrate chip solutions for other smart hardware products, such as mobile phones, routers and smart TVs, to establish a unified standard, and that the interconnection of data and content could be achieved by using MediaTek's chip schemes between different enterprises and different smart devices.

But the fact of the matter is that different smart hardware products use different chips depending on the function. "If all of the more high-performance chip, will enhance the smart home hardware costs, which for users, or early market popularity is not a good thing." "Wang Pure thought.

Visible, whether it is the chip, the software in the Intelligent home application, still need a long way to go.