First of all, let's take a look at Xiaomi's smart home platform, a model that can be summarized as "tycoon" mode. The so-called "tycoon" mode is that the hardware and software of this platform is almost all-inclusive, and the platform ecosystem has the absolute right to speak.
In 2014, millet in the smart home mainly did four things: 1, the continuous release of millet TV 2, millet box, millet router, millet smart socket, millet bracelet, millet intelligent camera, millet air purifier and other intelligent products. 2, invested in the United States such as the big appliances, *** with the cooperation of the development of intelligent home appliance products. At the same time also invested in nine Ann medical, with the launch of the millet iHealth blood pressure measurement meter, the layout of intelligent home medical. Lei Jun even said that millet will invest in more than 100 smart hardware companies in the future. 3, millet through cooperation with major real estate developers, and even launched a millet apartment, is to take this to show millet's smart home, so that users can fully experience and feel. 4, millet set up millet home improvement company, through the provision of low-cost decoration for the user, so as to give the user to pack their own smart home products.
Zhou Chunlin, a senior analyst at OFweek Industry Research Center, believes that the biggest advantage of the millet platform's tycoon model is that it has a high degree of control over the platform, and is able to quickly coordinate the interests of all parties involved in the hardware and software, which allows it to create the most extreme user experience. But the problem is, in the platform ecosystem is not big enough, this model is to rely on all the way to burn money to build their own, and easy to offend peers, it is more difficult to attract partners to build together.
Second, then look at Haier's smart home platform, this model can be summarized as, "self-help" mode. Self-help mode refers to the self-help of the appliance industry, in the era of the smart home, home appliance enterprises do not change their own will be subverted by others.
Haier's U+ platform is currently the most mature smart home platform. Haier as a qualification older, well-funded, product-rich traditional hardware manufacturers, its home appliance industry has a strong appeal and a relatively large user base. Through its own influence to raise the volume of the entire smart home market, Haier is the current stage of the heavy responsibility to bear. At present, Haier U+ platform has opened the cloud service data, intelligent hardware, APP and other interfaces to partners.
Zhou Chunlin, a senior analyst at OFweek Industry Research Center, believes that Haier's U+ platform's self-help model is to first develop a set of software protocols to connect its own products to become a platform, and then open up the protocols to allow other manufacturers' products to join its ecosystem. The starting point is to first upgrade their own products, and then we all come together to create an ecosystem. Overall, it is the most attractive platform for hardware manufacturers to join, on the one hand, because there is a big brother in front of the groping demonstration, on the other hand, the platform's control of the requirements of the partners is not as strong as Xiaomi's, and it is easy to access. However, just because the platform control is low, the participants are numerous and disorganized, the cost of communication and coordination will be very large, it is more difficult to create a perfect product service, the future will directly reduce the user experience.
Lastly, Jingdong's smart home platform, this model can be summarized as, "empty gloves" mode. The reason why I say empty gloves, is to be able to operate at low cost, if the platform really do up, the platform side benefit greatly.
Jingdong in 2014, within a year of successive investment investment in smart home enterprises Broadlink, released the JD + program and Jingdong Intelligent Cloud, and the launch of the control of different smart hardware devices "Super App", in general, is to launch the software platform is the main, and called on partners to join, their own investment is relatively small. The company's investment in itself is relatively small.
Zhou Chunlin, a senior analyst at OFweek's industry research center, believes that Jingdong's smart home platform, with fewer highlights, is mainly relying on its own sales channel advantages to draw in partners. The platform's biggest advantage is that it can establish a better distribution of benefits model, each participant basically does not have a conflict of interest above, the distribution of benefits is more balanced.
Lei Jun said, doing business to "make friends more, make enemies less", but the current millet platform model is difficult to say can do this. Xiaomi's platform from the beginning is a combination of hardware and software practices, their own both mature, large-scale users of the system software "MIUI", but also millet cell phones, millet TV, millet routing and so on a series of intelligent products, but also Kingsoft cloud platform as a back-end support, so to speak, even without partners, millet can also be home! To provide users with a complete and excellent intelligent life experience. The open interface to other intelligent hardware business, is conducive to the enrichment of the millet platform intelligent product line, education users, rapid occupation of the market has great benefits. Xiaomi's intelligent platform has a semi-open and semi-closed nature, semi-closed easy to create a good user experience, semi-open easy to create a rich ecosystem of intelligent products, once the entire mature platform is established, will have a strong bargaining power to the user.
Haier's U+ platform is currently the smart home platform with the most participating partners, which shows Haier's great influence in the home appliance industry. However, we believe that the U+ platform has a heavy burden, it itself is a task to carry the transformation and upgrading of the traditional home appliance industry, more on the original home appliance products to improve, perfect, and when the real touch to the fundamental interests of the home appliance industry will be very difficult to promote. For example, the future of intelligent life is a variety of intelligent products to integrate and interact with each other to complete the value chain of the industry may not be in the home appliance hardware, Haier itself is a home appliance company, then the platform is difficult to coordinate the interests of home appliance companies. Coupled with the U+ platform, although there are many participants, but the organizational control is far looser than the millet platform, and for the user, the smart home is a whole service, so the U+ platform is very difficult to cooperate. We predict that the Haier platform will not have much advantage if it leaves the home appliance industry, so it is better to just do a good job in the home appliance industry smart platform.
Jingdong's smart home platform is a very typical asset-light, Internet-based operating model, which is neither as heavy as Haier's hardware baggage, nor as easy as millet and partners to produce conflicts of interest, so if the platform side can have excellent software development and promotional capabilities, this model will go the fastest and widest. But this intelligent platform model has many competitors, Google, Baidu, Tencent and so on have joined, so we predict that this model will be the most mainstream intelligent platform model, the most rich ecosystem of intelligent products, but the profit model will also be the most difficult to determine. More / to understand.