Smart home industry enters development window

Smart home is not a new word. With the maturity of technology and market, the smart home industry is ushering in the “window period” of development. In recent years, with the popularization of smart devices, it is becoming a trend to use wireless gradually to replace cable. With the popularization of WiFi, it is considered by the industry that the obstacle to industrial development and the inconsistency of interconnected standards are gradually being solved. According to statistics from ABI Research, a US market research company, cumulative shipments of WiFi devices worldwide reached 5 billion units in 2013, and it is expected to approach 20 billion units by 2017. In addition to the improvement of technology, the smart home consumer market is gradually maturing. With the popularity of smart phones, consumers are no strangers to smart devices. At the same time, the prices of smart home appliances have gradually become closer to the people. Analysts believe that the future smart home market will reach 30 times the mobile Internet.

Faced with a promising smart home industry, poor experience is still a common problem in various smart home products. According to a smart home appliance product manager of a home appliance manufacturer, only 30% of users who purchase smart home appliances use smart functions. The bad experience is the main reason why users can't afford to be interested. He frankly stated that products with similar functionality to NEST have also done it themselves, but the operation is rather cumbersome and did not open the market. For poor experience, companies still need to think about the needs of users.

On the other hand, companies should grasp the development direction of smart homes. In the future, smart homes will inevitably be dominated by the pre-installation market, which is dominated by current lighting control, curtain control, and other content, and will be developed in the direction of smart appliances, control centers, and data mining. According to Perth Wei, vice chairman and secretary-general of the China Internet of Things Industry Association, in the future, if smart home companies want to grow well and make profits, they cannot rely solely on selling single products, but instead use smart home integration platforms to provide profits by providing services. In fact, this is Google's idea to acquire NEST. First seize the smart home control center, and then create a home connected system on top of the smart home, to play its data mining, integration capabilities, and to develop derivative applications to provide services.

With the development of smart devices and the Internet of Things, the Internet of Things must be the direction of development. For entrepreneurs, there is a lot of room for innovation in the smart home area where the concentration is not yet high. Smart homes will also become the next gateway to the Internet after portals, search, and smartphones.