Betting on smart locks, is it the correct way to open smart homes?

Smart home was once tuned to the "living room economy", and many domestic appliance manufacturers are the vanguard of entering the smart home market. TVs, air conditioners, air purifiers, water dispensers, sweeping robots and other equipment connected to WIFI, installed with Bluetooth, handed over to the smart phone to control; because it can directly increase the market share of smart phones and system use sticky, in the field of smart home I often see mobile phone manufacturers active. However, the concept of smart home is very hot, the product is very dazzling, consumers do not buy it, and there is no real reshaping of people's home life.

As the most important scene economy for family life consumption in the next decade, the eco-industrial chain of smart homes includes technical providers such as communication, voice interaction technology and fingerprint identification technology, as well as various new and unique intelligent hardware manufacturers. In addition, e-commerce crowdfunding platforms, offline distribution channels, etc. play a heavy lifting role in the sales of smart home hardware.

In the face of a complex and intertwined smart home, entrepreneurs are looking for a suitable cut-in, bet on the "one-of-a-kind" sharp-knife-type product, breaking the situation of wandering and rushing outside the smart home door. The most urgent thing at the moment.

First, the biggest need for smart home is smart security, not smart home appliances.

Why do consumers react to a variety of smart home appliances? First of all, many smart home products only add networking functions, which do not cut the pain points of users. Secondly, most of the smart homes accepted at this stage are urban rich young people. For the middle-aged and older people, the new tricks are better than cumbersome. After deducting most of the rural families in China, the market size is relatively narrow; once again, the renewal cycle of home appliance products is short, such as the user just bought 4K TV, and popular curved TV. In addition, many smart appliances have a limited opening rate. For example, people are watching TV less and less, and air purifiers are only turned on in smog weather.

In addition to smart home appliance manufacturers, smart homes of real estate developers, intelligent community O2O of property companies, artificial intelligence robots of Black Technology, and civil intelligent security have also laid out smart homes. The relatively mature smart security of technology and market has great potential in the smart home camp:

Safety is the most primitive basic needs of every family. Whether it is in urban or rural areas, people are more willing to invest in security. The more wealthy people are, the more insecure they are. In recent years, the intelligent security system for high-end residential has become a developer. One of the main selling points of the sale of real estate.

According to the statistics of the Ministry of Public Security, the annual family losses caused by burglary are as high as 1.13 billion yuan. In particular, with the implementation of the policy of demolition of walls and the establishment of an open community, the rate of community theft and theft will increase, and the demand for smart security of urban families will be even stronger.

People often do not easily replace security devices such as door locks, which can last up to 5 to 8 years. Due to concerns about the safety of family members and property, users are sensitive to the security level of smart security devices and networking messages.

In intelligent security equipment, access control, smart locks, cameras, etc. can be connected to Internet big data, cloud services, etc., to upgrade functional products to smart products. Due to the large number of family users, obvious strong demand and real pain points, and high-frequency use stickiness, intelligent security has become the first to detonate the smart home market.

Second, the smart lock entrepreneurial project welcomes spring

The door lock is the last barrier of security. Everyone goes in and out of the lock every day, but rarely pays attention to the lock itself. In the past, it was "a key to open a lock". However, the emergence of smart locks, people pass the proximity card, digital Passwords and fingerprints are unlocked. In particular, fingerprints are unique biometric passwords. They are widely used on locks, greatly improving the security and convenience of “unlocking”, making it easier to open a door like a fingerprint on an iPhone screen.

The smart lock makes the door more "modernized". For example, when the owner goes out, he does not have to repeatedly check whether he has forgotten the key; when he goes to work or in the field, he can check the family's entry and exit through the smart lock app; when viewing the relatives and friends through the visual camera, use The mobile phone can be unlocked remotely; the fingerprint password of multiple smart locks can also be managed on the APP; the rental house can automatically add or clear the tenant fingerprint without having to change the lock core; the fingerprints of the family can be stored in the “private cloud”, even the lock + APP+Cloud Service became an “Internet Lock” to control other smart home appliances.

According to statistics, European and American electronic locks account for 50% of civilian locks, and the penetration rate of Korean smart locks is 80%. The penetration rate of fingerprint wisdom in China is less than 2%. In China, about 350 million households, the number of fingerprint locks is increased by 5%. %, can bring 17.5 million sales, generating about 14 billion yuan of sales; huge market growth potential for internationally renowned fingerprint lock brands such as German Deschman, American Yale, Korean Samsung Such as speeding up the pace of grabbing the Chinese smart lock market.

From Taobao crowdfunding, Jingdong crowdfunding and Baidu search fever, consumers' awareness and acceptance of smart locks are rising rapidly. Some smart lock projects have become "black horses" in the field of crowdfunding before they appear in the market. : Alibaba Cloud and Manshen built a cloud smart lock crowd raising about 15.1 million, Schmander's Internet products Xiaoyun cloud smart lock has been crowdfunded nearly 20.52 million; set fingerprint, proximity card, password and other unlocking methods in one must Up to i6 raised 1.64 million; the main use of WeChat-controlled fingerprint locks, the number of Jier, raised to 542,000, etc., the broad mass base of smart locks can be seen.

The capital market has also increased the investment tilt of smart lock projects. The well-known smart lock brands Dijir and Yale were acquired by the Swedish lock giant ASSA ABLOY, and the integration of industry resources was intensified. According to the report of 36æ°ª, Xiaoyunyun Smart Lock won the A round of RMB 123 million in March 2016, which exceeded Previously, the highest financing record of A-100 million sets created by the ultra-screen TV in the smart home field represents the trend that the breakthrough point of smart home is shifting from smart home appliances to smart security.

Compared with many other black technology products, smart locks are indeed a rare "entry product":

Fingerprint encryption, APP texting, cloud networking alarms make the security level of smart locks much higher than mechanical locks, finger fingerprints replace traditional keys, and product experience is more convenient;

Smart locks can be connected to other smart home hardware with personal fingerprints as IDs, driving smart home products such as door magnets, window magnets, intelligent monitoring, intelligent light control, intelligent thermostats and smoke detectors, and automatic curtains. The necessary heavy verticality and the deep potential of the ecological chain;

The replacement period of the smart lock is 5-8 years, which is a sufficient time for the interconnection of many smart home products to form a family Internet of Things.

Third, the home smart lock industry outbreak needs to pass through three levels

So far, there has not been a unicorn company in the smart home market. Investors have high hopes that smart locks can change the virtual home situation of smart homes. At the 2016 China Smart Home Innovation Summit, Deschman founder Zhu Zhiling once said that the smart lock detonated the smart home market must have four core factors, namely, the offline promotion model to promote the establishment of online and high-efficiency after-sales service system. The cost reduction brought by the scale effect and the huge consumption drivers of the decline in prices, socialization and emotional demand.

For the entrepreneurial team, the smart lock still has great challenges in product technology, supply chain, channel sales, after-sales service, etc. Whether the smart lock can finally reach thousands of households still needs to overcome the three difficulties of quality control, channels and services. .

Quality Control: Smart locks are more complex than ordinary mechanical locks. The lock factory, cloud service, fingerprint algorithm technology, APP program development, communication protocol, battery and other factors in the industry chain will affect the smart lock. Performance quality. At present, some small factories on the market have bought modules and assembled them in a hurry.

In fact, as a mechatronics product, smart locks must have more than three years of process manufacturing experience to ensure the stability and precision of molds and accessories. Only by mass production can the marginal cost of smart locks be reduced and changed. At present, the price of smart locks remains high. The intelligent lock has extremely high precision on the fingerprint algorithm. It is the key to unlocking the fingerprint while achieving the same high-precision algorithm. Since the storage, identification and update of fingerprints all depend on the “cloud service”, the “cloud” side becomes the hub of smart locks for remote unlocking, false lock alarm, message push, message record query and other intelligent functions, thus the cloud service provider. The choice is also very important.

Channel closure: At present, most smart locks have chosen online shopping malls for crowdfunding or direct sales. This pure e-commerce model ignores the value of traditional channels. In order to achieve the rapid spread of smart locks in a short period of time, we should vigorously integrate the mature dealer channel resources of the offline industry. In the initial stage of market development, most consumers are still unfamiliar with smart locks. Installing smart locks is a rational decision of the family. It is difficult to achieve effective online promotion and hard promotion mode. Smart locks will open a direct experience store, or cooperate with home building materials, hardware stores, store display stores and other channels to drive sales on the spot.

Service off: In different geographical environments, there are different standards for fire protection, cold protection, and rain protection of smart locks; the conditions for smart locks entering locks vary, such as the thickness of the security door is different, the matching is not the same, installation or Maintenance of smart locks requires professional after-sales personnel to come to the door. People have already seen the trend of popularization of smart locks. Some new smart lock brands have emerged in the market. Regardless of the mass production capacity, huge capital investment is required in terms of service landing. At this point, the lock company that started from the traditional enterprise shows a comparative advantage. The O2O mode of the two-wheel drive on the offline line is more suitable for smart lock sales and services. For example, the worry-free service platform can be sent online and then lined. The following suppliers or service personnel come to the door to provide after-sales service.

In the long run, the ace of competition in the smart lock market will depend on the quality of the product supply chain and the offline service system. The stronger the foundation, the more you will gain the brand premium and the trust of home users; then extend to other smart homes. When you have a stronger potential.