Facing Xiaomi and Huawei, does Meizu smart home have room to survive?

This week, Huawei just released a newly upgraded smart home strategy and the ALL IN ONE smart home solution. Meizu also announced its smart home brand Lipro and will release new smart home products on January 5. Mobile phone manufacturers have shifted their competition tracks and entered the smart home market. Xiaomi has been planning AIoT for many years, and Huawei has launched the ALL IN ONE smart home solution. Does Meizu's smart home brand Lipro still have a chance?

The concept of smart home has been proposed for many years, why has it not really developed?

Since the concept was proposed in 2014, smart homes have been active in the public eye, but most of them are single smart products. There are very few manufacturers who can truly achieve whole-house intelligence. It is not that it is difficult to create an open platform, but that it is too difficult to get all home appliance manufacturers to join this platform.

Although the Open Alliance (OLA) was established on December 1 this year, with 65 members including Alibaba, Baidu, JD.com, Xiaomi, Haier, Huawei, Midea, Gree, China Overseas Land and Investment, and Opple Lighting, no results have been achieved so far, but it has laid the foundation for the development of smart home and the Internet of Things towards safer, smarter and higher quality. The alliance was established six years after the concept of smart home was proposed, and there is still no unified standard and protocol, so the development is not smooth.

Mobile phones have always been regarded as the entrance to smart homes, and mobile phone manufacturers also want to cooperate with traditional home appliance manufacturers, but this is a big test of the brand's influence and appeal, and more importantly, whether it can bring benefits to the traditional home appliance manufacturers that join. Both Xiaomi and Huawei have made similar attempts, but from the results, they have not been successful. Some analysts believe that the cooperation between these traditional home appliance manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers has not been successful. The main reason is that traditional manufacturers have been making hardware products for many years and have a complete product line. They cooperate with mobile phone manufacturers for the traffic and users they bring, and will not bring out all their products and data. In addition, some home appliance manufacturers are also exploring their own smart home appliance platforms, and they do not necessarily need to cooperate with mobile phone manufacturers.

Xiaomi takes a different approach and leads traditional home appliance manufacturers in market share

Xiaomi also cooperated with leading home appliance manufacturers to jointly develop smart hardware. Xiaomi provided modules and cloud computing. Initially, it reached cooperation with Midea, Supor, Joyoung and other manufacturers, but in the end, all of them came to nothing. So Xiaomi began to change its strategy and adopted the ecological chain approach to build its own smart home team.

After years of development, Xiaomi's ecological chain has grown vigorously and formed a strong ecological chain bamboo forest. According to IDC data, in the third quarter of this year, Xiaomi ranked first in China's smart home market with a share of 16.3%. In addition to the continued large-scale shipments of two popular products, TVs and speakers, the shipments of smart temperature control, door locks and lighting equipment increased rapidly this quarter year-on-year, injecting vitality into its hardware ecosystem.

The strategy of home appliance manufacturer Midea is quite special. It has cooperated with all smart home platforms, including Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO, etc. As long as it can bring traffic, Midea will accept any platform that comes. Therefore, it has become the second in China's smart home, which is also a good result. Midea's smart pace is leading in many home appliance product lines such as air conditioners and washing machines, and it is actively deploying in the smart lighting market to open up new growth points.

Having worked with Xiaomi to develop smart home products, why is Meizu making a second start now?

Meizu has launched a new smart home brand, Lipro. People with an Internet memory may have heard of Meizu smart home, but the last post on Meizu Smart Home’s official Weibo was in November 2018, and related products have been removed from the shelves. This time, Meizu wants to enter the market again, and needs a brand new image. Lipro is a combination of Life and pro, which means to make life better. It is the new appearance of Meizu smart home.

In fact, Meizu is not late in developing smart home. As early as 2015, when the concept of smart home was proposed, Meizu developed the LifeKit system around smart devices. Meizu LifeKit jointly developed the interconnection protocol with Ali Xiaozhi and Haier U+, and cooperated with traditional home appliances and smart hardware manufacturers to make LifeKit smarter. At that time, the smart devices connected to Meizu LifeKit were Haier Air Box, Haier Air Cube, Haier Tianbo Air Conditioner, Weizhi X-LightPlus Smart Bulb and RyFit Yunyue Smart Physical Analyzer.

At that time, Meizu Lifekit wanted to build a service integration platform for smart home devices, create a super APP, better serve users, and cooperate with more powerful and large-scale enterprises, such as real estate developers, to accelerate the development process in the direction of smart home. At the same time, Meizu Lifekit also specially built a smart model room, designed the most intelligent and comfortable environment and living scene, and opened it to the public on Airbnb. In 2017, Meizu Lifekit's smart home solution was also implemented in Vanke's high-end residential project. In the model room of Vanke's high-end real estate project, Jade Park, many smart devices of Meizu's smart home project were configured.

From building platforms and products to cooperating with real estate companies to deploy Lifekit smart home solutions in model houses, it can be said that Meizu has tried everything. Although it has not achieved major success, it has accumulated a lot of experience by feeling its way forward. Now Meizu's mobile phone business is tepid and needs new business support. The smart home field with a broad space is the best choice. Meizu has experience in this area, and starting again may have different results.

Judging from the current information, Meizu's new smart home product is likely to be a smart lighting product. This is a high-growth market, and the positioning is well chosen this time. As long as the product strength is sufficient, it will still be able to gain user recognition and survive in the smart home market.

Huawei's strong entry may break the current situation

Recently, Zhi Hao, president of Huawei's consumer business IoT product line, said in an interview that Huawei had launched the whole-house smart project two or three years ago to solve the four major challenges faced by traditional home smart networks: complex networking, high installation and debugging costs, difficult maintenance, and high personnel quality requirements.

It is reported that based on cloud, chip, network and AI technologies, Huawei's whole-house smart ALL IN ONE solution includes 1 host, 2 networks and N hardware. Through the integrated home infrastructure construction plan of network integration and device integration, it can realize the intelligent interconnection and coordination of whole-house smart hardware and sound, light, water, electricity and other systems, and promote homes from single-product intelligence and single-system intelligence to whole-house integrated intelligence. In particular, the whole-house smart host launched by Huawei is highly integrated, modular, intelligent and scalable.

Wherever there are wires, the whole house can be networked. Huawei's whole house networking capabilities represented by technologies such as PLC-IoT and WiFi 6+ cover both narrowband control and broadband transmission. By integrating the power grid and narrowband communication network, the deployment cost and pipeline cost are greatly reduced, and unified management of equipment can be achieved to achieve network integration. Huawei's intelligent host solution integrates devices and embeds them in the wall, without occupying housing area. In the past, several cabinets could handle the whole house data, but Huawei can solve it with just one box. This is tantamount to a comprehensive innovation for the smart home industry.

Zhi Hao said that Huawei has joined hands with 42 partners to establish the PLC-IoT standard, and completed the interconnection of massive home hardware through the integration of power lines and control lines, established an end-to-end ecosystem from infrastructure, service providers to channels, and promoted the standardization of PLC whole-house interconnection.

Huawei has built a platform based on its own technological advantages and influence, and has also called on many partners to join. If it can truly integrate the industry, it may be a good thing for users. But now Huawei's mobile phone business is hindered by the ban, and the Hongmeng system is not yet mature and usable, and its future development is still unclear. What partners value may not be the cooperation itself, but Huawei's influence.

Conclusion:

Currently, Xiaomi is the best in smart home. Xiaomi has achieved unified standards and protocols by supporting the ecological chain. Huawei relies on its own technological advantages and influence to attract home appliance manufacturers to cooperate and join its platform, and has also launched products such as smart screens. Meizu mobile phone users are too small and may not be very popular with traditional home appliance manufacturers. If they want to gain a foothold, making distinctive smart products to attract users is also a good choice. The smart home market is huge, and small and beautiful manufacturers can still gain a foothold.