Thursday, April 15, 2021

Is the Internet of Things the "Super Internet"?

 Midea has mastered the customs clearance script for the intelligent industrialization of the whole house. The launch of this conference on April 12 may also provide a valuable reference and model for the trend and development of the industry in the next ten years.

In 1999, the concept of "Internet of Things" was born, but consumers 20 years ago did not care much about what the word meant. Witnessing the explosive development of the Internet in the past two decades, people gradually understand and even start to look forward to a real scene in the era of the Internet of Things.

Accenture once did a survey, what are the IoT landing scenarios that users are most looking forward to? Most consumers have chosen home furnishings, confirming the consumption potential of smart home appliances. A recent press conference reflected the exploration and achievements of Chinese companies in the field of smart home.

On April 12, at the Midea x Douyin Superpin Day Smart Small Electronics New Product Launch Conference with the theme of "Smart Everything", Midea launched more than 50 new smart home products at one time. As the first global top 500 home appliance company in China, Midea, with 53 years of home appliance manufacturing experience, has been paying attention to smart home appliances very early, launching so many new products at one time, which also illustrates Midea’s strategy of promoting full-category smart products and full-scenario smart interconnection coverage. The layout has begun to bear fruit.

It can be said that Midea has mastered the customs clearance script for the intelligent industrialization of the whole house. At the starting point of the new decade of the smart home industry, the holding of this conference may also provide a valuable reference and model for the trend and development of the industry in the next ten years.

Intelligence without scenes is pseudo-intelligence

After ten years of development in China’s smart homes, the focus of the industry’s attention is no longer a single intelligent product. After all, with the current technical conditions and industrial capabilities, it is not difficult to develop an intelligent product, but the product cannot be interconnected and experienced across scenarios. It must be fragmented, and it is impossible to upgrade to a smart home.

Therefore, the product foundation for customs clearance is the interconnection of things, and the prerequisite for ecological openness is cloud-cloud interconnection.

Almost every player who is interested in smart home cares about the ecology, but the Internet has followed the usual free and low-cost strategy, using traffic to make explosives, resulting in the average annual reduction of the unit price of domestic consumer-grade IoT products by about 5% in recent years.

Adhering to the “things” as the core of Midea, it has taken another path. It is scene-oriented, strengthens user operations, reconstructs product iteration ideas, and develops a complete whole-house smart ecosystem.

In this system, the mature cloud ecosystem promotes the continuous evolution of product intelligence.

Midea has achieved full-category smart products and full-scenario smart interconnection coverage

In May 2019, Meiju APP completed the most important version 5.0 upgrade, introduced a new scene design, and began to create a real whole-house smart experience.

At the new product launch conference on April 12, we can also see a large number of smart products developed based on vertical segmentation scenarios. The cross-scene context linkage capabilities have been greatly improved, and the scope of user customization has continued to expand. In the foreseeable future, The whole house smart experience will inevitably enter a full-blown period.

On the other side of the system is the evolution of Midea at the channel end.

Home appliances has always been a channel-defining industry. The development of the past few decades has been twists and turns. The deep integration of large-scale low-cost manufacturing and offline store models has created the first round of brilliance in China’s home appliances; in the era of e-commerce, home appliances as standardized products It is also the biggest beneficiary; in today's experiential consumption era, personalization is respected, reverse customization is rising, and products and consumers need a new way of communication.

Observing the trend of consumption changes, Midea began to break the game in both directions.

First, in large home appliance stores, promote scene display to replace outdated shelf display.

Research shows that when consumers make the final decision, 80% depends on the scientific and conspicuousness of the product display. Ingenious dynamic line design and scene embedding can upgrade static products to dynamic sales. The IKEA of the year benefited from this. .

In the past, sales staff in home appliance stores followed the three-sentence rule, “If you are active, you will move, experience if you can experience, and speak as soon as you can speak.” However, today’s smart home appliances are still in the early stage of consumption, and sales staff accurately grasp the product. In addition to selling points, it is also necessary to redesign customer interception and transform scene perception to create deeply embedded empathy. Leo Burnett has a famous saying, "Selling steaks is actually the sizzling sound of fried steaks." This logic is for intelligence. The same goes for home appliances.

Brand new beautiful smart small electric super experience store

Second, smart small electronic terminals drive an experience beyond expectations.

At this press conference, Midea’s new smart small electronics experience terminal was also publicly unveiled at its first store in Chongqing, and tried to use the first cloud shelf method in the store, which will not occupy the storefront, but can also expand the imagination of SKU and consume The user can pass through the waterfall flow of the high-definition large screen to complete the order and delivery of a full set of smart home appliances based on various life scenarios.

While improving the ecology, Midea also created a brand new shopping experience. The complete whole-house smart ecosystem provides the highest matching consumption space for Midea products.

"Things" are the key

In 1990, Bill Gates spent 7 years and spent US$60 million to build the world's first fully intelligent mansion, but after just 30 years, it is no longer the enviable goal of the world. Because most of the science fiction dreams 30 years ago have become reality. Those new technologies that were once unclear and breathtaking have already flown into the homes of ordinary people.

The announcement on April 12th will give us an insight into how smart smart home appliances can be.

Dozens of new products released by Midea at one time are all based on intelligence + practicality, starting with scenarios to create new experiences.

The 8 Quick series products can be said to be lazy house welfare. In addition to being highly intelligent, fully automatic, and multi-functional, the cross-scenario IoT will give consumers a completely different experience. Take the QuickMore integrated cooking center as an example. Through the modular design of the whole machine, the combined upper cover or body can be replaced to realize the switch among the four major forms of induction cooker, boiler, pressure cooker, and air fryer. Through the IoT interconnection, you can also download the new functions and recipes in the Midea Meiju APP to the product body to customize the exclusive functions of this machine. In the future, it can also be equipped with an integrated stirring lid to transform it into a smart cooking machine, or with an exclusive transparent glass pot to realize visual food cooking, and expand the machine's more ways to play. Based on many possible extensions, the QuickMore integrated cooking center is called by Midea as its first cooking "toy" since its establishment 53 years ago. The entire Quick series perfectly interprets what is meant by "AI gives you freedom and releases your hands for love and love".

Midea's new Quick series of smart new products

The new hard-core technology shows the world the achievements of Midea’s “full digitization and full intelligence”. In addition to new materials and new processes, there are also many black technologies for cooking and environmental cleanliness.

It is not difficult to see that Midea has already had in-depth research and insight into the main consumers of the new generation who are gradually grasping the right to speak. On the one hand, they have a preference for high-value, personalized, customized, high-quality, and unique functions. On the other hand, It is their strong agreement with the stratification. In response to this insight, Midea has developed a multi-brand + IP set of crowd-level operation strategy. The Toshiba brand is geared towards high-quality middle-class people and is deployed in the high-end market; while the Hualing brand, as a new technology species of Midea's Internet small electronics, caters to the young generation's pursuit of beauty, personality, and fun, and is oriented to the Z generation and the two-dimensional young group.

Not only that, Midea also launched a series of high-value, powerful, and social-oriented fashion products at the press conference. It is also a joint collaboration between the official announcement and the MOBA mobile game King Glory to launch a series of strong associations with the game. product.

Midea officially announced the set of small household appliances jointly launched with King Glory at the press conference

Ecological experience never borders

Not limited to the product level, the other fulcrum of Midea's promotion of whole-house intelligence is ecological synergy at a broad level.

In the past five years, 1,000 companies in China have been involved in IoT technology and applications. The beauty is that few of them have core technologies at the perception, IoT, and application layers, but they have always maintained an open mind.

As early as 2016, Midea and Huawei signed a strategic cooperation agreement to jointly promote the construction of smart homes. In 2019, the IoT products of both parties entered the mutual trust channel through account binding, which truly realized "cloud-cloud docking", giving consumers the opportunity to enjoy cross-category , Cross-scene information sharing capabilities.

In the "Top 100 Private Enterprises in China" released by Hurun in March this year, Huawei and Midea took the first place and second place. This is not only an affirmation of the strong alliance, but also a recognition of the future of smart homes.

At the Huawei 2021 whole-house smart product launch conference held not long ago, Midea was also a strong platform as the fastest landing partner of HarmonyOS.

In addition to the in-depth cooperation with Huawei, Midea also has similar cooperation with companies such as OPPO, VIVO, and JD. The focus is neither on hyping concepts nor establishing barriers, but on creating disruptive experiences that exceed expectations.

While expanding the smart ecosystem, Midea is also exploring the boundaries of user expectations.

Not only is it satisfied with providing smart products in all scenarios, Midea also extends the user experience to a broader ecosystem and is committed to providing a full set of healthy eating solutions. As early as 2016, Midea launched a cross-ecological chain innovation cooperation with COFCO. Based on the big data of Midea's smart home appliances and user health management needs, it opened up COFCO's supply chain and supported users' one-click purchases. At the press conference on April 12, Midea also displayed its preferred ecological raw material products, covering brand ecological cooperation in the entire culinary field such as rice, grain, meat, vegetables, meals, tea, etc., creating a complete set of It's so good to use the closed-loop full-process ecological experience.

The cooperation between Midea and various upstream and downstream brands has covered the cooking ecology of rice, grain, meat, vegetables, meals, tea, etc.

With the rise of quality consumption, there will be more and more segmented scenes covered by smart home appliances. New products such as coffee machines, bubble water machines, tea brewers, and milk tea machines will inevitably emerge in endlessly. While enhancing the joy of life, they will also be smart home appliances. The cross-industry chain cooperation brings greater imagination.

In the long run, smart home is not a simple function and experience innovation, but a new way of life.

In "Doraemon", every time the protagonist Nobita is beaten up by life, Doraemon will save the scene in time, and also comes with a soul massage, "I never make mistakes, you can trust me."

Consumers who are willing to pay for smart products are actually paying for the good life they dream of.

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