Why do traditional furniture companies not try to explore the “big cake” of smart homes along the lines of companies such as Haier and Xiaomi? After all, a market with a scale of 100 billion yuan is definitely not a matter for companies to share. It will be able to divide up.

Leveraging developers to open smart markets

Not long ago, Haier Home Appliances officially announced that they will cooperate with each other in the smart community, home improvement and home shopping malls in the Jiadu, the newly-built real estate project of Haojia Real Estate, in combination with Haier’s smart community. The owners provide O2O life service platform, one-on-one hardcover service platform and one-stop home supply platform.

Han Xusheng, president of Haojia Real Estate, said at the meeting that the Jiadu project will have an intelligent system of “smart, ecological, security, and wireless network” 4G technology. Connect real estate, home appliances, smart homes, community services, the Internet, and the entire social business network through cloud technology, so that homeowners can fully enjoy various services such as home improvement, shopping, consumption, and health care. For example, shopping, ordering meals, medical treatment, payment, remote control of home appliances, etc., a variety of services can be a key to get, so that the industry will be a real smart home, smart community.

Traditional furniture companies have no technology to eat the “smart” market In simple terms, Haier Home is helping Haojia Real Estate build a new smart community.

Those who are not familiar with the smart home industry may feel strange to Haier. In fact, as early as seven or eight years ago, Haier home has already set foot in China's smart home field. As an important business unit launched by Haier Group in the information age, Haier Smart Home uses the U-home system as a platform and uses a combination of wired and wireless networks to connect all devices to the network through information sensing devices. The "Home Small Network", "Community Intranet", and "World Wide Web" are interconnected, and the intelligent identification, management, and digital media information of 3C products, smart home systems, and security systems are realized through the Internet of Things. shared. Hai Liu, general manager of Haier home, said that Haier smart home to do is to allow users in any corner of the world, any time, through the phone, send text messages, Internet access and other ways to interact with home appliances.

Why should we choose to cooperate with real estate developers? Directly putting smart home products into retail outlets is not more direct? In the view of Yang Tienan, co-founder of Alibaba.com, smart homes have chosen to cooperate with real estate developers and have a very good market environment. The big relationship is because for the general public, smart homes can be regarded as the icing on the cake, but it is not a necessity. Therefore, there is not enough motivation to actively change the existing lifestyle.

It is very difficult for consumers to rely on personal strength to accept smart homes. Yang Tienan believes that real estate developers can provide a good platform for smart home buyers to let users really understand the convenience of smart communities, and Haier can use the real estate platform to better promote smart home products. It can be described as a win-win situation.

Because of this, Haier began to cooperate with many domestic large-scale real estate developers such as Vanke, Evergrande, Greenland, and today's Qianjia, and then followed one by one smart community.

"As long as consumers buy a house, they have to be 'forced' to experience this new lifestyle of smart home. Once they feel good after experiencing it, it means that we have initially changed their way of life. They will be very It may be possible to choose smart home products,” said Chen Yulin, head of the smart home department of Haier Home Group Co., Ltd., and the cooperation with real estate developers has undoubtedly helped them solve the big problem of “how to change user’s lifestyle habits”. On the other hand, the real estate developers on the other side, whether it is because of the use of smart communities as the gimmick to attract consumers to buy a house, or from the bottom of heart, they want to create a new living environment for consumers. The cooperation method has been accepted with great joy. Because for whatever reason, they are winners.

Early adopters of smart products in furniture companies

If Haier was still somewhat "solitary" in the field of smart homes seven or eight years ago, today, there have emerged a number of new "adversaries" beside them. In recent years, Crestron, Sobol, Apple, Xiaomi, Google, Amazon and other companies have laid out smart homes. Smart homes seem to have become a favorite of everyone.

According to statistics, by 2020, China's smart home market will reach 350 billion yuan. Someone shouted: "No wonder! It turned out to be a big market of 100 billion!"

On the other hand, when these companies with different backgrounds break through their original business boundaries and cross-sector development in the field of smart homes, on the other hand, home companies are also seeking smart homes in a big cake in another way. A corner. Among them, E&N Yien smart furniture was produced by Yizhifang Furniture.

Earlier this year, E&N Yien smart furniture series products were officially unveiled at Beijing Blueview Lijia Home Store. It is understood that E&N smart furniture revolves around user experience and combines the functions of daily life such as network, audio and video entertainment, and related control with traditional furniture, and integrates electronic intelligence, mechanical intelligence, combinatorial intelligence, and intelligent intelligence that is being developed. The furniture products, such as the solid wood coffee table that can heat the teapot at any time, is one of their new smart furniture products.

Chen Zhanchun, director of intelligent furniture product operations at YI En said: “At present, our brand has a total of more than 200 products, of which there are more than 20 smart furniture products. Next, we will continue to develop new products to improve our product chain.” It is reported that perfecting the smart furniture product chain is only the first step in the layout of the enterprise. Next, they expect to develop an APP software, and then use this software to connect all smart furniture products in the home together, which is convenient for unified control. It facilitates the unified software upgrade in the future.

Not only that, sanitary ware companies represented by TOTO and Kohler have also developed more convenient and comfortable new generation high-tech products in recent years, such as smart toilets and smart bathtubs. Recently, Xilinmen, the leading company in the mattress industry, also launched its first smart mattress at this year's Shanghai International Furniture Fair. It is said that in addition to its basic functions, the mattress also features additional functions such as sleep checkups and sleep aids.

No technology can not eat "smart" market

Whether it is the E&N smart furniture products launched by Yizhifang Furniture or the smart Toilet products launched by TOTO, they emphasize the concept of “smart furniture”. This is in line with the “smart home” products promoted by companies such as Haier and Xiaomi. What is the difference?

According to the data, the concept of smart furniture refers to a furniture product with certain technological functions. The smart home, based on a residential platform, integrates home-life related facilities using integrated wiring technology, network communication technology, smart home-system design solutions, security technologies, automatic control technologies, and audio and video technologies to build efficient residential facilities and The family schedule management system improves home safety, convenience, comfort, and artistry, and realizes an environmentally friendly and energy-saving living environment.

If smart furniture emphasizes a product, then smart home is more focused on a platform. Yu Xiusu, vice president and secretary-general of the Beijing Furniture Association, said in an interview: “Technology changes lives, smart homes will become a direction for the home industry in the future, and smart homes are currently divided into two aspects, one is the construction of the platform, Like the current Internet giants Google, Microsoft, and Apple, all of them are deploying smart home platforms, and the other is the development of smart single products.” She believes that the development of smart single products will become a successor to the furniture industry after custom furniture. Dark horse.

However, an industry veteran who declined to be named said that the smart furniture category currently has a negligible proportion of sales in the furniture market. The reason is that besides high prices, the monotony of experience is also an important reason. "A lot of furniture companies have introduced smart furniture products. They are more likely to use this as a gimmick to attract consumers' attention. Therefore, the functionality and convenience of products have not been brought into full play. The cost-effectiveness is a big problem. “The person in the industry said that the price of a single smart sofa is at least three to five times more expensive than that of an ordinary sofa, and the smart experience consumers get is only from the sofa. Products, more people think this is not worthwhile.

Why do traditional furniture companies not try to explore the “big cake” of smart homes along the lines of companies such as Haier and Xiaomi? After all, a market with a scale of 100 billion yuan is definitely not a matter for companies to share. It will be able to divide up.

"It's not something you don't want to do, but you can't do it. Technology is the core of smart home, and what a furniture company lacks is exactly the technology." He Hongyi, a top 100 furniture director and general manager, bluntly stated that furniture companies have no way and channels to master the smart home sector. The core technology, the Internet of Things is the need to rely on high-tech support, it requires a complete set of operating systems and cloud, which, furniture companies really seem powerless.

However, this does not mean that the furniture industry has so easily abandoned the smart home section. He Hongyi said that furniture manufacturers can cooperate with technology companies in the smart home sector. However, he believes that due to the lack of core technologies, furniture companies cannot become leaders even if they participate in the smart home sector, because only mastering core technologies can win. Take the initiative.