Analysis of "Chinese-style" Home Automation Will Prosper

In recent years, the domestic home automation market has developed rapidly, but its market application is still in its infancy. The user base is mainly concentrated in high-end residential areas such as villas and luxury homes. They have a fundamental need for home automation: the lighting of the whole house is too much, too close to open and close; the floor-to-ceiling windows are too large, and the manual switch curtains are difficult, etc. At this time, if the home automation system is installed, the user can go to the door and go to bed. Turn off the lights and turn off the curtains remotely, which is simple and convenient.

"Although the home automation system is the icing on the cake for most people, but as long as we have everyone's recognition, it will become necessary for everyone. Just like a mobile phone, before everyone wanted to send text messages and make phone calls. Nowadays, mobile phones are becoming more and more feature-rich, and the Internet and online games are all sought after by everyone, said Haizhi U-Home Chief Engineer of the Family Li Zhizhen.

In this regard, Haier engineer Chen Xuetao holds the same opinion. “From 2008 to 2009, the application of home automation systems was limited to high-end villas, but with the improvement of people’s living standards and people’s recognition and demand for home automation, real estate developers Gradually realize that the home automation system is also one of the bright spots to attract users, and now many real estate for the public will be associated with automated systems.General users will generally consider when using, first, whether the price can withstand, and second, whether the technical level is mature. ”

In the face of considerable market prospects, most manufacturers are concerned that the concept of the entire home automation industry is unclear. In the industry promotion process, some manufacturers simply use simple light control systems or intercom with simple alarms. For home automation systems, mislead the development and understanding of the industry. Home automation system as a new industry, in its primary development process, people's perception of its concept is crucial. For any new thing, first of all, people must have a certain understanding of the process, and then enter the popularization stage after understanding, and then they can develop.

When home automation brings home automation, everyone thinks that they are in a smart home environment. A remote control can control all the appliances in the home. It can automatically cook rice at home and automatically turn on air conditioners and water heaters. Every night, all curtains will be timed. Automatically shutting down ... to a certain extent, the concept of home automation is equivalent to smart home, that is to achieve family intelligence, make the family more convenient and convenient, as in the past when people go to the clinic when they see a doctor, now through home automation, can achieve telemedicine diagnosis.

But after careful study, they are also different. Home automation is more convenient and comfortable, and manual operation becomes an automatic way. It mainly uses electronic technology and uses a central processor to perform unified control of household appliances and security equipment. In addition to automation, the smart home also includes an information platform and a multimedia platform. In the intelligent stage, the entire system has a “brain” like a robot. In terms of automation, it requires more intelligence. For example, in the home, the air conditioner is turned on by means of a mobile phone or a telephone without manual remote control. This is to realize automation, and the smart home can be judged by the external environment, such as air humidity, temperature, etc., to determine when the home air conditioner is turned on. When and when the temperature is the most comfortable. Most of the manufacturers believe that home automation has been a way for smart homes to exist in the course of its development. Today, it has become a core part of smart homes and is the primary function of smart homes.

At present, there is no unified authoritative standard answer for both, and endless debates are not the focus of this special topic. From the perspective of interviews, whether it is home automation or smart home, we are more concerned about integrating the Chinese people. The consumer psychology and characteristics of home improvement and national conditions have guided market demand. From the perspective of corporate promotion, we should also avoid using gimmicks to confuse the market. Looking at the current stage of the market, the way in which the expectation of an exaggerated promotion is not suitable for the initial stage of the application, but it needs to be a step-by-step process. In combination with the characteristics of the Chinese-style home improvement market, exploring more valuable profit models, blindly copying foreign methods or other electronic product models are not suitable.

Understanding the user's living habits and avoiding blindly controlling home safety is a matter of concern to everyone. In China, people live in a relatively intensive environment. In the past, they installed security nets to ensure the safety of property and family. For aesthetic reasons, many new buildings are not equipped with anti-theft nets. Therefore, anti-theft alarms and remote monitoring are very important. Today, the home automation system can integrate security and home appliance control. The owner can start the security system with just one click.

The owners all want to activate the security system with a single key when they go out. If someone invades, it can find alarms and automatically call the owner’s mobile number. However, in practice, this is only a small-scale application. “This has a certain relationship with China’s national conditions. If an intrusion occurs at home, the burglar alarm system will notify the owner by phone or send a message at the first time. The owner hopes to be able to handle the property after the alarm, but the property does not have the power to handle the alarm. Can not send the police directly to the user's home to catch the thief, so the burglar alarm in the entire real estate application is relatively small, there is a problem of responsibility, where to report? Who to deal with? "Shenzhen Bochuang Technology Development Co., Ltd. General Manager Shen Che said . "Moreover, the user's participation is not high. In the community or at home, the user will see a red button. This is the emergency button in the alarm system, but users generally do not care about the device of these buttons, and the degree of understanding is not deep. Therefore, if there is any emergency, it is seldom to press that button, and more is to choose to dial 110,” added Wang Yu, Bosch Assistant Product Marketing Manager.

For video surveillance, users will consider privacy issues. They are generally installed only at the gates and balconies, which are easily invaded, and are not willing to install surveillance in the living room or bedroom. At the same time, the remotely monitored image can be transmitted to the user's mobile phone, but since the information is transmitted on the public network, it is insecure because it is also transmitted to other people's mobile phones. Therefore, video surveillance is not universally popular at home. many.

“The fall alarm is more liked by users because the elderly in the family are generally inconvenient for mobility. The owners don’t have time to look after the elderly at work. The old man falls and the system can detect a fall and alarm automatically. At the same time, the information will be sent to the owner’s mobile phone. In the same way, the community personnel pet positioning system is also more popular, usually the owners can see the people they want to focus on at the home terminal, such as children playing in the community, can carry out personnel positioning, effectively prevent children from being abducted.” Haier Li Zhihao said.

In any case, if you want to use the home automation system on a large scale, understand the real needs of users and implement it reasonably, it is the focus that manufacturers should pay attention to. "In theory, manufacturers should try to meet the user needs of the various controls, but at the same time depends on whether these controls are reasonable, meet the user's current life needs, this is the most critical," Sheng Boer Technology Co., Ltd. building automation business Yu Fei, the general manager of the department, reminded, “For example, the user needs to automatically return his clothes to the hook. This can be achieved, but this is usually not necessary. Currently in China, the home automation system does not have a clearly defined range. Some controls are More blind, some are more practical."

Exploring More Valuable Sales Models At present, the terminal market for home automation systems is not very mature. Generally, manufacturers rarely establish stores directly or sell products to end users through stores. Then, how do manufacturers combine the consumption needs of the Chinese people and the Chinese-style home improvement market? Features to explore more valuable sales models?

DIY is not popular and mainly depends on integrators or real estate developers. Usually in the application of home automation projects, generally real estate developers and system integrators provide owners with an integrated automation control platform. "After the platform is built, the owners can make secondary investments according to their different needs for the home automation system and select the appropriate terminal control products that can be matched. The design and installation of the owners is generally the responsibility of the system integrator," said Guan Lin of Fujian Province. Zhang Zhanlin, product planning manager of Technology Co., Ltd., said.

The domestic home automation system has not yet reached a complete fool mode. It can not be used directly as a general home appliance. It involves commissioning and installation. It has a certain degree of professionalism and complexity. It is more specialized companies such as weak electricity and integrators. According to the needs of users, plan design, commissioning and installation. However, because manufacturers do not directly participate in the design and installation, if the integrator's technical level is insufficient, it may not achieve the expected results. If it is accompanied by real estate developers fine-tuned housing, supply centralized, centralized installation, commissioning, the average cost is relatively low, but the owners can not choose their favorite products, personalization is not outstanding, decoration style may be inconsistent with their favorite style, And the owner may feel that some functions are not practical.

Relatively speaking, foreign home automation systems have developed earlier and the brands are relatively mature. Generally, they are mainly wired systems with a combination of strong and weak electricity. In addition, foreign users can do their own DIY to a certain extent and carry out some installations by themselves. Debugging, personalized design for your own needs. “The actual situation of domestic users is that there are few clear individual needs and hands-on capabilities. For example, computers and domestic users generally do not buy parts themselves to assemble. DIY methods are not really popular in China at present. The ability is relatively strong, and even they will assemble a car by themselves,” said Sheng Bolang Yu Feifei.

This has a certain relationship with the domestic and international living environment. In China, many conditions have limited the ability of industry leaders. First, the issue of cost, in China, please decorate the company cheaper than foreign companies, the cost of your own hands is not necessarily cheap, so there is also a dedicated property company to replace light bulbs to do the job, unlike foreign countries such as the United States, sparsely populated, even if the traffic is very Well-developed, foreigners living in one trip may not be able to request professional maintenance personnel to perform maintenance from dozens of kilometers away because their own water taps are broken. This is obviously not economical. On the other hand, unlike foreign countries, each household has its own His own basement can be equipped with a complete set of tools. China has a large population and a dense living environment. He usually holds the electric drill “up and down” in the upstairs and downstairs, affecting neighbors next door. Therefore, to a certain extent, Chinese owners would like to DIY their own hands and they can only stay in the thought stage.

User experience, many sales of various types of home automation products are expensive, a whole set of configuration is as few as several thousand pieces, and as many as tens of thousands, in fact, this is compared with the investment of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of the owners when the decoration, the home automation The cost of the system accounts for a negligible proportion, which requires the manufacturer to strengthen the guidance of the owner's consumption concept.

"There is a certain relationship with the social environment. The basic functions of a home automation system are generally about 10,000 to 20,000. In fact, this price is not very expensive, but it will not be necessary according to the concept of Chinese consumption. They would rather spend a few. One hundred thousand to buy a car,” said Haier Li Zhijun, “So, in the early stages of renovation, we will recommend our products to the owners in the form of several packages, such as ten packages corresponding to the ten needs of the owners. The cost will not be very high, and the people will accept it easily. If the owners are concerned about the safety function, we can first help them to install it and let them experience it for the first time. After a while, they want to install a light control in the living room. Let’s help again. They installed it so that a number of sales models were formed. So, let them first experience it little by little. This is a process of vendor guidance."

Similarly, like Apple's mobile phone, it is so hot, one of the reasons is the user experience and ease of operation. Therefore, manufacturers must first consider from the user's point of view, how can they make them easier to use? Such as air-conditioning remote control, some elderly people want refrigeration, he does not need to press the mode key, one by one to change, in order to change to the cooling mode, he just press the button, cooling and heating functions are arranged together, a little cooling, namely It can automatically adjust to the most suitable temperature, convenient and quick, so that they will be happy to use it to accept this product. This is the direction of the manufacturer's future efforts.

Many sales are mainly in the aftermarket. After the installation of the wiring requirements are more demanding, the general use of wireless, unlike the pre-installed market, before the installation of decoration, wiring requirements are relatively low. Moreover, the user's house is not renovated every few years like shops, homes may not be renovated again in more than 10 years, and some are only painted it, there are few walls and the like. As a result, the formation of multiple sales requires special attention to the scalability of the system and easy integration with platforms and interfaces.

It takes a while to sell the service model. Generally speaking, the warranty period of the home automation system is relatively short. It takes one to two years. After the product is sold out, the future after-sales service is the responsibility of the manufacturer. "First, the product will continuously upgrade. With the upgrading of technology, the old generation of products will experience soft wear, or invisible wear. Our manufacturers will carry out seamless replacement. Second, if there are no existing replacement products, only a few Parts need to be replaced, which requires the company's local service and timely maintenance, said Qi Tao, product manager for Honeywell's residential security industry in China.

With the popularization of the home automation system, the price of the system may be very low or free, and the manufacturer may turn to selling the service, that is, after the entire platform is built, the user is provided with services on the platform and the service fee is charged. However, due to the certain equipment investment in this model, the entire service system is very large and the operating costs of the service are relatively high. The manufacturer must have certain financial strength. This will be the future direction of home automation systems, but it still needs a long way to go.

Currently, most manufacturers engaged in home automation systems have relatively small scales and relatively weak anti-risk capabilities. If a manufacturer fails, B manufacturers will generally not take over from the company's activities, and this will be in an embarrassing situation. Just as Po Chong said, “Who will handle the after-sales service after the product is sold will be more dependent on the manufacturer. The key depends on the manufacturer’s social responsibility and brand positioning. As we sell products to customers, we will do it. Lifelong service, we cooperate with developers, and there will be technicians and developers working together to deal with this issue.”

How to popularize in a large area needs to think deeply about the functions of the entire home automation system. Although powerful, there is no uniform standard and communication protocol between each system. Each has its own responsibility, lack of coordination, complex and inconvenient operation of the system, insufficient humanity, and lack of products. Stability and other issues will affect the market development of home automation. Moreover, at present, there are very few companies that can accomplish large and complete in home automation systems. Generally, they are mostly small companies. Therefore, how to unify product standards and how to make use of their own advantages, and become bigger and stronger, is to do home automation. System manufacturers must ponder the problem.

During the gestation period, domestic automation control systems with different standards are still in the gestation period. The standards vary from one family to another, and few companies can truly provide systematic and complete solutions. This leads to the need to realize their functions. Patching together eventually led to instability of the entire system.

"The problem of disunity is the biggest problem. Now no one can come up with a qualitative standard for home automation systems. You say that you are a smart home. I say that I am home automation, and ultimately it will not result in a complete function. Control system," said Sheng Bolang Yu Fei. In fact, in the process of system integration, technical problems can be solved. The only problem that cannot be solved is the problem of market application. Because there is no standard specification, there will be many strange problems. Although the technology of home automation system is very mature, its application and market are still in the bud in China, and the industrial chain has not yet been formed.

“Now is the situation where all vendors compete for the competition. Everyone wants to have a certain share in the market and have a greater right to speak. Each standard is completely different, but after a certain development, there will be a process of survival of the fittest.” Bochuang said calmly, “And there will be some leading companies in the process. These leading companies will have a strong lead in setting standards. With the adoption of industry standards, various manufacturers will gradually rely on this standard. Because if you don't move closer to this standard, it will be eliminated by the market. But at present, the home automation system is still in the early stage of development, and the standard cannot be unified."

Many small companies, lack of professional knowledge, generally there are three major domestic manufacturers engaged in home automation systems, one is the earlier engaged in intelligent, automated product development vendors, early mainly to do the drive system, and then gradually the system to do a better job, Include more controlled objects; the second type is security class manufacturers, originally engaged in traditional intercom systems. With the homogenization of security intercom products, they need to find some updated concepts, updated concepts, and integrate into products. In the middle, the concept of automation and intelligence is gradually introduced. The third category is the home appliance manufacturers who originally sold traditional home appliances. With the fierce competition in home appliances, the concepts of home appliances have been added to automation and intelligence to achieve differentiation.

“At present, many companies engaged in home automation systems are not very large in scale and have complex backgrounds. Their respective focuses are different. Even many sellers do not know what to sell. Manufacturers do not know what to do and users do not know what to buy. Therefore, The whole industry needs to unify this concept. Basically, the internal training will be a unified concept, so that you will know what to recommend to users.” Haier Li Zhixi said. It is understood that technical experts in domestic home automation systems are still in short supply, and most of them are related industries or construction industries that have joined the industry. The understanding of the entire industry technology and the entire system is not very comprehensive.

Chaoyang industry will become the most potential user group for the younger generation of consumer products. The awareness and acceptance of home automation are very high. At the same time, real estate developers gradually recognize the value of home automation systems for real estate development. Therefore, Home automation system is a sunrise industry. With the improvement of people's living standards, the demand for automation is increasing. The home automation system will inevitably become an integral part of our lives, just like mobile phones and computers. Return from luxury goods to popular consumer products!

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