Intelligent home appliances are just concepts

Since March, the concept of "intelligence" has become the new darling of the capital market. Following the daily limit of Meiling Appliances' "unlisted smart products", the listed companies such as Midea Group, Hisense Electric, Sichuan Changhong, and Little Swan have all experienced a substantial increase in their stock prices after they released their intelligent strategies. % to 20%.

Intelligent household appliances have become the hottest topics in the current home appliance industry. However, a 21st Century Business Herald survey found that most of the current smart concepts proposed by manufacturers are merely hype, and it will take time to truly achieve the goal.

Manufacturers speculation

The "initiator" that traced this round of intelligent upsurge was the concept of "home Internet" first proposed by Sichuan Changhong in July last year. However, at the time, Changhong merely proposed its conception of the home Internet system, and no specific smart products were listed.

Until February 18 of this year, Meiling Electronics, a subsidiary of Sichuan Changhong, received a daily limit because it was exposed by the media to institutional investors experiencing the company's new generation of smart refrigerators. Although later Meiling Electric issued a clarification announcement, denying this claim, but the capital market showed a high concern for the intelligence of home appliances but let other appliance companies move their hearts.

Immediately afterwards, on February 25th, TCL Group put forward the "double +" strategy of "smart + Internet" and "product + service"; on March 10th, Midea Group released M-Smart smart home strategy; on the 17th, Haier released The new U+ smart living operating system; on the 18th, Konka Group announced the strategic goal of transforming the Internet, and proposed the "1+1 strategy" of the Easy Terminal+easy platform; on the same day, Hisense released the first smart refrigerator equipped with NFC technology in China. Accelerate the construction of "smart home"...

For a time, "intelligent" became the key word for the home appliance industry this year. According to AVC data, the total value of China's smart home appliance industry in 2013 was 100 billion yuan. It is expected that by 2020, this figure will increase by about 10 times, reaching a scale of about 1 trillion yuan.

According to the relevant person in charge of Little Swan, at present, the proportion of automatic washing machines in the Little Swan product structure has reached 20%, and by 2015, this proportion will increase to 45%. Wu Wenxin, executive vice president of the Midea Group and president of the Home Air Conditioning Division, also said to the 21st Century Business Herald last year that Midea Air Conditioning had implanted IoT smart technology in all new inverter air conditioners and strived to use three years to realize IoT smart air conditioners. The proportion of sales accounted for more than 50%.

However, in fact, more so-called new products for smart appliances are merely external communication modules based on traditional products, and the products are still only a prototype. Many manufacturers and even home appliances have not solved the problem of interconnection and interoperability.

Ren Xuwei, Dean of the China Household Electrical Appliances Research Institute, pointed out to the 21st Century Business Herald that most of the intelligent concepts proposed by companies are still at the product level. How to establish the interconnection and interconnection of all electrical appliances in the whole family and realize the whole social system? Contact is the real sense of smart home, home appliance companies are still at the exploratory stage.

Capital sought

However, although the current concept of intelligence is only at its infancy, the repercussions of the capital market are encouraging.

According to incomplete statistics of the 21st Century Business Herald, since the introduction of the concept of intelligence, the share prices of Midea Group, Hisense Electric, Sichuan Changhong, and Little Swan and other home appliance listed companies have all increased by 5%-20%.

In this regard, the senior industry economic observer Liang Zhenpeng analysis believes that after the home appliance companies announced the intelligent strategy, IT, Internet, software, Internet of things, cloud computing, big data, Sensors, etc., have been with the home appliance industry, the cutting-edge vocabulary of technology into a home appliance company. The new label on the body is very likely to cause investors in the capital market to rush and even took the opportunity to speculate on the stock price.

Bohai Securities Research reported that major home appliance makers in March are not limited to the release of smart home appliances, but have also been deployed in smart home operating systems. However, after the concept of melee, we still need to wait for the competitiveness of products landing.

"I just raised your stock price by your concept of intelligence. When many small and medium retail investors flocked to follow up and buy, if you couldn't get a decent product, then I immediately cashed out. After retailers were locked up, The buzz was finally left to the company, said Liang Zhenpeng.

Landing difficulties

In fact, as early as 2012, Haier proposed an intelligent transformation strategy, followed by the introduction of intelligent products such as smart TVs, smart air purifiers, and smart watches. However, the market does not use this, resulting in Haier’s intelligent strategy. Can't delay landing.

Liang Zhenpeng believes that before the intelligentization of white goods was difficult, it was because there were two bottlenecks in the industry. "First, the intelligent function of manufacturers' wishful thinking to promote to consumers is not what consumers are interested in, namely, "there is no solution to the user's pain points." Second, even if there are intelligent functions that consumers are interested in, they are usually too The tedious, daunting consumers, that is, "the user experience is too poor."

Many management of home appliance companies admit to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that the market demand for intelligent white electricity has not yet been opened, and further training is still needed.

In addition, the lack of unified standards at home and abroad is also one of the important reasons why the current intelligence is difficult to land.

For intelligent system platforms and standards, Midea and Haier both proposed open sharing, connecting users, partners, hardware vendors, and developers, carrying different brands of home appliances, and even including other service providers in the society into the service system. But a person in the home appliance industry broke the middle of the question: "Who wants to put their own products in other people's systems?"

Therefore, home appliance manufacturers try their best to build their own platform, and actively introduce Internet companies such as Ali and Iqiyi to increase the value of their own platforms. On the other hand, they regard user resources as an important asset and they are not easily shared with others.

"The enterprises have their own standards and directions, and intelligence seems omnipresent everywhere, but it is a waste of resources." Yan Xuwei believes that the key to the development of intelligence is to first establish a unified guideline and standards, so that domestic and foreign home appliance manufacturers are Can participate in, and jointly promote the landing of smart home.