Smart Home Platform now "Three Kingdoms Kill" Domestic Giants to Keep Up with the Trend

At the end of June this year, JD, Alibaba's main competitor, released a super app product "JD" cloud service. At the end of October, JD officially released its first intelligent hardware management platform "super app". JD smart cloud super app includes four parts: smart home, healthy life, automobile service and cloud space. Whether it is home devices, on-board devices or wearable devices, unified management can be realized through super app. Of course, JD's move also requires the cooperation of a third party to join JD's intelligent cloud platform. Haier, Hisense, TCL, Huawei, Lenovo and other manufacturers are important partners. In fact, the identity of JD e-commerce is the main advantage of attracting third-party cooperation because it can help third parties promote and market intelligent hardware.

On the same day that JD officially released the intelligent hardware management platform, Tencent launched the QQ IOT social intelligent hardware open platform. Unlike jd.com, which mainly relies on e-commerce platforms to integrate hardware, Tencent's great advantage lies in its excellent social applications. "Cooperate with all hardware manufacturers to quickly cover 800 million QQ active users and 400 million wechat users, including application treasure with a daily distribution of 100 million", so as to distribute software products and help third-party hardware manufacturers market hardware in this way, The third parties include Intel, NXP, Qualcomm, Konka and other well-known hardware manufacturers at home and abroad.

Recently, baidu smart home, an open platform for Baidu intelligent Internet, has also been launched in a low-key manner. Baidu Zhijia first launched the "router open platform". Through "small routing", baidu hopes to realize the interconnection of smart home devices in addition to providing users with download, storage, remote communication and user authentication. Of course, baidu Zhijia's open platform is not limited to routers. According to Baidu Zhijia's plan, open agreements for smart sockets, scales, air conditioners and other household devices will be launched one after another. Similarly, baidu also has partners. Lenovo, Leike, Haier, iqiyi, Foxconn and Guanlin have joined Baidu's intelligent Internet open platform.

Strictly speaking, the three smart home platforms are not the same, and the "roots" they rely on are very different. JD relies on e-commerce platform, Tencent relies on social platform and Baidu relies on search platform. However, the common ground of this smart home platform is also obvious, mainly in the following four aspects: first, although the specific business is different, the main body is Internet technology companies; Second, it is to build a smart home platform and layout the smart home field; Third, they are not fighting alone and have their own collaborators; Fourth, we should take ourselves as the leading factor, but we should be able to drive the marketing of partner hardware through our own influence.

Is it pure coincidence that there are so many present points? I'm afraid not. People who pay attention to the smart home industry can easily find that these smart home platforms have something in common. Yes, home furnishing platform Homekit as like as two peas is almost exactly the same layout.

In early June this year, Apple launched its own smart home platform homekit at WWDC (Apple global developer conference), announcing its official entry into the field of smart home. As an application suite, homekit is part of Apple's new system ios8. It integrates Siri voice function and allows users to control and manage smart door locks, lighting devices, thermostats, smoke detectors, smart appliances and other devices at home through Apple hardware devices, so as to make users' intelligent life easier. The key problem is that Apple itself does not have smart home hardware. The hardware is also provided by a third party, including idevices, iHome, Cree, August, marvel, Philips, Withings, Broadcom, etc.

Internet technology companies, layout in the field of smart home and have their own partners. How does Apple bring "benefits" to its partners? In fact, this is not difficult to understand. For third-party collaborators, being mentioned by apple and establishing cooperative relations with them is a kind of promotion, of course, and more than that. Take the smart door lock August. The brand's smart door lock has long been famous, but it has not been sold. When it officially entered the store this year, there was an apple retail store in addition to its official website. I'm afraid this is also an important reason why Apple can reach cooperation with August.

To build a smart home platform, apple is not the first person to "eat crabs", but the development model of the smart home platform is popular because of it. At least before and after the news of Apple building a smart home platform, no enterprise can compete with apple for the headlines of smart home. The strong popularity can even be compared with Google's $3.2 billion purchase of nest at the beginning of the year. Apple may not consider "covering the white wolf with empty hands", but mutual cooperation and resource exchange must be an important strategy for its rapid development of smart home.

It is difficult for us to say that the building mode of domestic smart home platform is to follow the trend, but it is also difficult to be convinced that they are original models. However, it should be acceptable to say that "innovation" combined with its own reality should be based on Apple's model of building a smart home platform. The situation is similar to QQ to ICQ and Baidu to Google. Although the smart home platform helps Internet technology companies to enter the smart home field, it has to be admitted that at present, smart home enterprises such as IOT sensor are still doing better.