A smart home user bluntly said when chatting with the "Intelligent Relativity Theory", "The whole house is smart, it can't be returned if you use it."
Starting from pressing the smart door lock when entering the door, the porch light is on, the sound of "Master, welcome home" is emitted by the smart speaker, the sweeping robot slowly returns to the charging stand, and the water dispenser is powered on and starts to boil water. As you enter, the entrance lights are turned off, the living room lights are turned on, the curtains are slowly drawn, and the TV lights up. . . . . .
Thirty years ago, Bill Gates spent $113 million in seven years to build such a "home of the future". Today, such a home may cost tens of thousands of yuan for ordinary people.
5G Commercial Full Attack, Smart Home Upgrade Speed Up
At present, smart homes are constantly increasing. The home appliance stores on weekends are gradually getting out of the door during the epidemic. The store is full of various intelligent home appliances. In front of the counter of a certain refrigerator brand, a refrigerator labeled "Hot-selling" Being enthusiastically recommended by sales staff.
"The biggest difference from other refrigerators is that this one has a large intelligent interactive screen, which is very different from traditional refrigerators in function. It can bring users a more intuitive smart home experience, such as support for browsing short videos, listening to music, The ability to learn how to cook and buy food online is equivalent to a tablet computer. It can automatically monitor the freshness of the dishes and has a sense of technology. This refrigerator is very popular with young people now, and it can also be linked with other home appliances... ..."
The comprehensive advancement of 5G network commercialization has become an important driver for the continuous advancement of smart homes.In February this year, the GSMA think tank released the ``China Mobile Economic Development Report 2021'', which mentioned that by the end of 2021, the 5G network will cover one-fifth of the world's population. , By 2025, global operators' investment in 5G networks will be close to US$1 trillion. Among them, from 2020 to 2025, China's domestic mobile operators will invest nearly 210 billion U.S. dollars to build networks, of which 90% will be invested in 5G.
What exactly does 5G mean for smart homes? High-speed, stable, and fast response? These are only part of the development of the entire industry of smart homes are inseparable from the role of 5G. And smart home will also become one of the largest areas where 5G capabilities are displayed.
Bear the brunt of the problem, 5G network will solve the problem of "isolation" and "fragmentation" of smart homes. At present, most of the so-called "links" of smart homes just stay in the basic "Internet of Things" state. Although "Internet of Things" is the basic link of the entire smart home, it is also the most "low-level" link. For example, at this year's AWE, Changhong released the industry's first 5G ecological complete set of home appliances. Relying on 5G and multi-protocol integration, it not only realizes the interconnection between self-branded hardware, but also connects with a number of smart platforms such as Huawei and Xiaomi.
Secondly, the blessing of 5G will make the product experience smoother. Smart home devices often have a little pause when exchanging information, and then they can give feedback. Such delays often make the human-computer interaction experience poor. In the 5G era, this delay will be reduced by 10 times, allowing the network to enter the era of single MS, which will subvert the experience of all existing network fields. For example, in the field of surveillance cameras, brands such as 360 are building 5G pan-tilt systems, and the integration of 5G networks will further strengthen the stability of video image transmission.
Finally, it is to further release "intelligence". Since most of the smart homes have entered the market in the form of single products before, their terminal control also needs to rely on additional devices, such as smart phones or smart TVs, etc. The linkage of device interaction depends entirely on the user's understanding. 5G, because of the unification of network standards, 5GAIoT may truly realize the AI of smart homes, and realize storage, computing and distribution under the comprehensive cloud + edge mode. Just like Huawei's latest "whole house smart solution".
It is also in the context of the popularization of 5G networks that it can be found that the top players in the smart home field at this stage have "abandoned" the single-product strategy and rushed to the embrace of "whole house intelligence", but their "whole house intelligence" model It's quite different.
Differentiated rivalry between smart homes, Huawei and Xiaomi fight another battle
At the moment, there are a lot of players focusing on the field of "whole house intelligence". At the beginning of the year, Midea formally established a "smart home business group" to fully develop the whole house smart ecology; in March, at the Xiaodu spring conference, Baidu released Its Xiaodu whole-house smart solution; In April, Yunmi launched the "Helpful strategy to comprehensively promote whole-house intelligence. But it is Huawei that has received the most attention.
Since the mobile phone business was blocked, Huawei's efforts in the smart home field have been particularly obvious.Not long ago, it has released a new set of smart home solutions, from accelerating the upgrade of the underlying Hongmeng OS to grabbing smart screen hardware devices, and then to today With the new whole-house smart solution, every step shows Huawei's unwillingness and rebirth.
The topic of Xiaomi's car making has been hot for the time being, but in Xiaomi's view, the so-called car making is not a separate re-engineering of hardware, but a further enrichment of its AIoT ecosystem. At the press conference, in addition to the topic of car building, Xiaomi also released a variety of high-end smart home products, and Lei Jun said that "the next step will be to systematically advance in the field of 'whole house intelligence'."
I don't know whether it is deliberate or unintentional
Like this time, Huawei’s "whole house smart" solution, its biggest feature is that the previous "All In One" IoT strategy has been refined to "1+2+N", where 1 refers to 1 host and 2 is two devices. Zhang Network and N refer to the rich and expandable Hongmeng intelligent connection ecology. Through network integration and equipment integration, the intelligent interconnection and collaboration of the whole house's intelligent hardware and sound, water, light, and electricity systems are realized.
A more popular understanding is to put a "host" in the user's home, connect all the hardware or systems in the home through two sets of WIFI6 and PLC networks, and then users can add free systems according to their needs, such as lighting intelligent control systems , Environmental intelligent control system, water intelligent control system, safety protection system, audio-visual entertainment system, intelligent household appliance system, etc.
The difference between Huawei's "Whole House Intelligence" and Xiaomi's "Whole House Intelligence" is that it is more like a "pre-installed system". The line network layout is in place in advance. After that, users need to install the corresponding modules without considering the line layout. And other issues. On the contrary, Xiaomi's whole-house intelligence based on hardware ecology may be more flexible. Users can adjust at will according to the changes in the home scene, but to a certain extent, it is also testing the user's own understanding of smart home. The reason why Huawei can achieve "pre-installation" depends on Huawei's first application of the PLC network to the home field. The integration of PLC gets rid of the rigid conditions for the network of smart homes.
PLC is nothing new in the industrial field. At present, the PLC control bus is the most conventional mode in the industrial automation field. Simply put, it is "data transmission through the power line to ensure that there is a network where there is electricity." This is also Huawei and Huawei. The biggest difference of Xiaomi.
At this stage, both Huawei and Xiaomi are pursuing the "central processing unit" model, while Huawei puts the processor in the user's home, and Xiaomi uses the cloud method. The existence of the home central host ensures that Huawei's entire house intelligent system is It can still run smoothly when the network is disconnected, which Xiaomi can't do. To put it bluntly, Huawei's substitution of PLC mode into the field of smart home is to solve the problems of "link", "control" and "ecological integration".
But if the two modes must be separated into high and low, it can only be said that it depends entirely on user needs.
Active or passive, this is another problem
After Huawei launched the "whole house smart" solution, its price has aroused extensive discussion. There are two initial packages with 3 bedrooms and 2 living rooms (about 100 square meters) and 5 bedrooms and 2 living rooms (about 200 square meters). The prices are respectively 99999 yuan and 149999 yuan.
Some netizens rudely explained that if you have money, you will choose Huawei, and if you have no money, you will choose Xiaomi. This is obviously wrong.
First of all, it is absolutely impossible for the whole house to have software without hardware. Both of Huawei's systems are software. It is not that you have a so-called "smart life" if you move home. If you count the hardware, some Mi Fans bought Xiaomi's complete set of smart home hardware for a total of 690,000, which the poor can't own.
Secondly, Huawei's solution is not suitable for most users, because the comprehensive wiring layout is best before the house decoration, so Huawei's whole-house intelligent system is not so much for C-end users, it is better to think that the B-end market is actually more potential. Large, a hard-covered room with Huawei’s whole-house intelligent system may be more attractive. For those users who have completed the decoration and want to experience the intelligence of the whole house, Xiaomi may be the right choice. Users only need to add the corresponding equipment according to their needs. In addition, Huawei's system is more complicated in the process of maintenance and replacement. Xiaomi directly replaces the hardware.
Finally, Huawei's adoption of "control terminal" to "whole house intelligence" is also due to the relative lack of its own brand hardware ecology. It is obviously too late to fight with Xiaomi in the hardware link, and the investment will be even greater than the loss, and the software Integrated model Although various smart home players have always had ideas, there is no good model or technology.
However, Huawei uses PLC to differentiate the smart home. However, this differentiation may not last long. In terms of electrical control, there are a number of "experts" such as Siemens, Schneider, and Omron, and they have a greater advantage in price. In particular, Schneider is also constantly adding whole-house intelligence at this stage, but it has not yet applied the PLC system to the home field. Once they move, it is also a question of whether Huawei can take the initiative.
Some people think that Huawei's entire solution is more intelligent, while Xiaomi's smart home requires users to adjust their settings. However, "Intelligent Relativity" believes that Huawei's systematic solution will also derive some new problems. For example, based on the in-home host, machine learning, big data, algorithms and other technologies can be used to construct a set of users that is most suitable for users' life and usage habits. Smart home solutions, here will involve user information collection, information confidentiality and many other links. Are users willing to "monitor" all aspects of life? This will form a "definite loop" with Huawei's technical system.
Summarize
In the field of smart phones, Huawei and Xiaomi may not be able to fight to the end, "whole house intelligence" will become their new battlefield. Who can be better in this new field? Who do you think?