Since 2017, 'artificial intelligence' has become a hot word in the home appliance circle, and the concept of 'smart home' has once again been picked up by many manufacturers and pushed to the wave. Smart TV, smart washing machine, smart refrigerator, smart speaker, etc. Series of smart products occupy the living environment, balcony, bedroom and other home environments, forming a smart ecosystem.
Recently, the 17th China International Consumer Electronics Show (SINOCES) came to a close in Qingdao. The protagonist Haier displayed a set of smart kitchen scenes in his exhibition area. Coincidentally, Skyworth was officially released in Shenzhen shortly before SINOCES. The new intelligent Internet of Things kitchen appliances. The smarter ecosystem's layout has expanded and eventually occupied the 'kitchen'.
The kitchen electricity market is cold, and the transformation is imminent
The kitchen appliance market has been able to maintain a high growth trend in the downturn of other home appliance industries. According to statistics, the average retail sales of the Chinese kitchen appliance market increased by 13.5% from 2012 to 2017, leading by double-digit growth. All household appliances. But in 2018, China's kitchen electricity market experienced negative growth for the first time. According to data from Ovi Cloud, the retail sales of kitchen appliances in the first quarter of 2018 was 12.8 billion yuan, down 6.1% year-on-year.
Some insiders analyzed that the kitchen electricity market was cold, one was related to this year's real estate policy, and the other was that the traditional kitchen appliances were homogenized and eventually showed saturation. According to the statistics of the home grid, the kitchen electricity market was removed. Vantage, the boss of the 'Yu Sanjia', and Haier, TCL, Skyworth, Hisense, Changhong and other cross-border 'great crocodile' settled in, the entire kitchen appliance industry has more than 500 brands.
According to the law of economics, when the homogenization of products in a certain industry is serious, enterprises must have a price war in order to compete for market share. However, as a way to obtain the growth of turnover at the expense of profits. The price war is not beneficial to the development of the industry. In order to avoid falling into the infinite loop of price wars, many kitchen appliance manufacturers actively carry out structural transformation of kitchen appliances, and intelligent kitchen appliances with automatic temperature control and health and safety appear in these. The middle of the manufacturer's product.
The concept of smart home infiltrates the old marketing model
People's memory is limited, and there are not many products that consumers can remember. A company often has a strong single item that is remembered by consumers, so it can be successful. Therefore, as a marketing strategy, 'Single product wins' has always been the common 'magic weapon' of home appliance companies: Hisense, Skyworth, Changhong is famous for their color TV products; Gree, the United States is relying on air conditioning to win; Fang Tai, Vantage, the boss relies on its powerful kitchen appliances.
Although the strategy of 'single product wins' has been tried and tested, with the development of the times, the advancement of technology and the arrival of consumption upgrades, the consumption environment of home appliances in China and around the world has changed.
First of all, the application of artificial intelligence in the home is more and more extensive. According to the home grid, statistics show that the global smart home market reached US$84 billion in 2017, up 16% from 2016's US$72 billion. 2018 Global Total consumer spending on smart home devices, systems and services will be close to $96 billion, and the compound annual growth rate for the forecast period (2018–2023) will reach 10%, reaching $155 billion.
At the same time of the rapid expansion of the smart home market, the drawbacks of the 'single product wins' strategy are also presented. In the smart home concept, home automation occupies a very important position and is the core of smart home. To achieve home automation, people need network and The system integrates or controls the electronic and electrical products in the home. If the home appliance manufacturers are still attached to a certain category of home appliances, then the phenomenon that the home appliances cannot communicate with each other may occur. For example, a consumer buys back an intelligent system. Hisense TV, but can not use it to order Gree air-conditioning, and consumers want to change the air-conditioning, found that Hisense does not sell air-conditioning, Gree does not sell TV...
In the current Internet of Things era, consumers are no longer looking for a single category of home appliances, but a solution for a better life. For those home appliance manufacturers who have grasped the current pain points of consumers, how to provide a complete set of , smarter, more humane smart home solutions have become a top priority.
Create an IoT platform, future home appliance sales or enter a new model
Compared with Skyworth, Haier, TCL and other manufacturers who started to build their own home appliance ecosystem, traditional kitchen manufacturers are still a step slower. According to the home grid, in this year's SINOCES Haier exhibition area, Haier can not only let U+ platform The range hood directs the oven, and can also connect kitchen appliances to smart terminal water heaters, TVs and other equipment to create a complete smart home ecosystem.
In the early days, Skyworth launched the 'Smart Habitat' strategy at its 30th anniversary celebration to create a smart home system that can connect TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, range hoods, smart yin and yang, and more. Forming Skyworth's unique smart family 'ecological circle', Skyworth smart kitchen appliances is one of them.
In addition, there is also Hisense's gathering platform, TCL's smart home integrated solution and other IoT platforms for smart home connectivity also emerged this year.
Industry people tell the home grid, it is foreseeable that next, home appliance companies will no longer be obsessed with the sale of single-category home appliances, but will solve all the home problems of a family by family. This will also lead to a comprehensive large-scale More and more home appliance groups, mutual competition will also rise from competition between different products to competition between different ecosystems, and ultimately change the sales model of the entire home appliance industry. Future consumers consider more likely to be which brand The system is more intelligent, more user-friendly, and more compatible.