OFweek smart home network news Amazon's Echo with tens of millions of shipments and more than half of the market share, is recognized as the world's most successful voice assistant products in the Chinese Internet has been widely praised more than a year.
However, success is such as Echo. In any domestic technology and shopping forum, responsible water friends never recommend that other people buy at the original price. There is no reason why he does not support Chinese. Taking into account the original price of up to 199 US dollars, if you can not start with the membership price or other low prices, so much money can be bought is nothing more than a design with a sense of Bluetooth speakers - to be honest, even save the membership price of 100 knives, It's not too cheap for a Bluetooth stereo speaker.
What's more, the relationship between voice assistants and smart homes is so close that most people must also consider the utility of their outreach products when considering whether Echo itself is easy to use. Answering this question domestically, the answer is also tragic.
Therefore, powerful as Echo, but also because of language and many other issues were blocked outside the Chinese smart home market. In this kind of embarrassment, the sudden emergence of a brand that is in stark contrast to the "high-end" of smart homes - Xiaomi.
Smart home is far away from you, but it is not difficult to catch up with the trend
Many of the rice noodles that I came in contact with could not give me a good answer on the issue of "The Millet Family Barrels" (Mizu and his series of household products). Although they generally say, “Do not look at millet low, but the price/performance ratio is indeed high.†“Millet is the best quality product in the same price range.†“Easy to use, the manual does not have to look at it.†Most of them did not purchase a considerable amount of Mijia products, let alone build their own smart homes with Mijia products.
"They are poor enough to not make rice flour," or "poor like real rice flour." Some of them are so self-deprecating. In fact, in my opinion of an "outsider," I don't have to be so mean because I don't use any brand of smart home products. I have to ask why. My answer is definitely "not needed."
However, we all understand that there is sometimes a layer of window paper called “cognitive†or “customary†between “do not need†and “demandâ€. Before reaching out to those who are really smart homes at home, I also think that smart home is far away from me.
I never knew that my friend A was a rice noodle. In fact, his article written by the media as a black millet was often 100,000+. However, to visit his residence, I discovered that he is a smart home lover, and those smart homes are all millet's.
A Open the phone and show me the Mi app. Millet's mall app has three: Xiaomi Mall, MI Home, and Mi Jiayou. To buy and control the "millets for the whole family," Mi has enough of an app. This app is both a store and a controller. It can connect your mobile phone and your own Mi device.
A. There are still a lot of barrel contents in the family - purifiers, humidifiers, sockets, wireless switches, lamps and bedside lamps. What is a smart law? There are three main areas:
Sensing: Purifiers, humidifiers, etc., are automatically turned on when the sensor detects someone in the room; people leave the room for a period of time and turn off automatically.
Timing: Sockets, wireless networks, etc. In a fixed period of time (for example, after work to the time before going to work, the person's time at home), the detection will be opened; at other times, it will be automatically closed.
Remote Control: All switches can be controlled by the Mijia app on the phone, especially the lights.
I browsed the specific settings in the Mijia app and it was intuitive for me who had never purchased a smart home. As for the connection of products, as long as there is a wireless network. Of course, there are many ZigBee models for whole family buckets outside the wireless network, as mentioned below.
I asked if the smart home caused trouble or malfunction. A said that the setting itself is relatively simple, the cost of misoperation is very low, not too much trouble; the software has not failed; because the wireless network is not stable, sometimes the automatic switch will be out of order, this time the manual switch can be remedied; Limited, longevity is not long, but the price is not expensive, you can repeat the purchase.
It can be seen that "Millet's Family Barrel" has indeed provided a set of unsatisfactory smart home solutions in China. Although the time for the launch of the Mi family was not too early, the home system of the Mi family integrating a series of smart products before Xiaomi was still intact.
Compared with the strengths of the products, the installation and after-sales services are clearly beyond the reach of Xiaomi. As a result, air conditioners, smoke hoods and other equipment are still not covered. In order to use the Mijia app to connect air conditioners, A also bought Mi's universal remote controller. The universal remote controller is an electronic product with a long history and a strong sense of existence. In a sense, the smart home brings new life to it.
Why do you need, why not
I was curious about how A wanted to buy this pile of stuff. What's more, A doesn't think of himself as rice flour.
A said two reasons to me. The first is that devices such as purifiers and humidifiers, middle-aged and elderly people (such as his parents) are often unable to remember to open in the room, which leads to well-intentioned purchase of equipment often do not work.
"Well, I'm very much in agreement with this. My mother also looks at the purifier," I said. "And then?"
"The other thing is that when you go to bed to read a book in winter, you need to get out of bed and turn off the lights before going to sleep. You can't stand it."
I see it. Admittedly, this may be a negligible demand, but it is precisely this insignificant demand that can be written in paragraphs that can cause tens of thousands of users to resonate on Weibo.
Another point, A did not say for himself, I can summarize for him: As a resident of the duplex building, he ran around to switch equipment is really too much trouble.
The reason why I found A to understand smart home was actually because I was talking about the most incomprehensible voice robot “Richioâ€. A said, because if Qi can connect the Mi family, he is considering using Qi to control the "millet rice barrel" - just like Amazon Echo.
Why is it difficult for domestic smart home fans to consider Amazon Echo? It is a very good explanation. Language barrier is only part of the problem. Many Internet services cannot be used normally in China. It is a big problem. Many home appliances connected to Echo are difficult to buy on the mainland, and after-sales service... This is probably the biggest obstacle to the popularity of Echo in China. .
That is to say, even if the Chinese are proficient in English or Echo supports Chinese, and China removes things like walls and walls, Echo's presence in China is still difficult because the related smart home companies are not willing or capable. Into the Chinese market, this led to the Chinese Echo users to buy smart, but can not buy home.
So what about Jingdong Micro? I asked A. Why did you not consider the Jingdong Micro-Link that can be used in China?
A said that there are no obstacles in reality, but in the face of Jingdong’s similar to Echo’s “Do it yourself smart, others do home†model, he has three concerns:
First, the cooperation between other electrical appliance manufacturers and Jingdong Microelectronics Co., Ltd. may not be stable for a long time, which may lead to occasional replacement of individual components;
Second, compared to the control of the Xiaomi family's products, many of Jingdong Micro's products may have advantages and disadvantages, making it difficult to choose;
Third, the overall perception of multi-brand product portfolios is poor and the visual effects are uneven.
This is certainly A's opinion. From my point of view, the "Intelligence I Do, Home Doing" model represented by the Mi family also has corresponding drawbacks. This dispute can be said to be radish cabbage, but from a worldwide perspective, Amazon Echo, Google Home and the non-existent Apple HomeKit have not adopted the millet model. We can certainly interpret Xiaomi’s ideas as unique, but it is not necessarily a good thing to be unique in every sense.
Speaking of Apple's HomeKit... What? how much is it?
Agreement dispute
In fact, the controversy over the smart home model not only differs between the Xiaomi and Jingdong modes, but also has a major difference between WiFi and ZigBee (we don't say that Z-Wave cannot be used at home). As mentioned before, most of the Mi's products provide both WiFi and ZigBee specifications. Although the double standards solve the problem of the momentary choice, the double standards will undoubtedly bring higher costs to the manufacturers and provide more entry for the consumers. More trouble.
As for their respective advantages and disadvantages, the advantages and disadvantages of WiFi are obvious to everyone. We are here to talk about the relative advantages: The advantages are mainly high transmission rate, strong stability, direct access to the Internet, and, er,... Poor security. Of course, at the smart home application level, the advantage of high transmission rates is negligible—how much data can be stored at home by several sensors.
What is ZigBee that everyone is not so familiar with? First of all, the original intention of this technical invention was outdoor application and industrial monitoring. Therefore, it showed a very large scale advantage: low power consumption, large networking capacity (65,000 upper limit of equipment), and high security.
However, because of its obvious advantages when it comes to scale, these advantages have been more or less diluted in the smart home field of “killing chickens and using knivesâ€: in the domestic power environment, the higher power consumption of WiFi cannot be said. Accepted, and with the technological innovation WiFi power consumption is also declining; smart home does not need to access tens of thousands of devices in one breath (of course, can only access 7 such as Bluetooth is obviously not, this is a critical point) The advantages of large network capacity cannot be reflected; the demand for security at home is not so strong, and taking into account that the ZigBee protocol is not mature enough with respect to WiFi, the ever-changing protocol may lead to new security problems.
The disadvantages of ZigBee over WiFi are obvious: the protocol is not mature, and the stability is worrying. Although ad hoc networks are convenient but cannot directly access the Internet, smart homes need to have a loop router; networking requires the purchase of a dedicated gateway. WiFi does not have to consider this; and the most serious problem is that the ability to go through the wall is extremely poor, and it can hardly be used in a room.
In addition, there is a contradiction that WiFi does not care but ZigBee has to care about, that is, they will interfere with each other. I believe that everyone can give up ZigBee decisively because of this, but I am afraid that no one will decisively give up WiFi.
Obviously, if you are not planning to dwell on a geek's "smart room" and consider purchasing "smart homes" for the whole family, using ZigBee equipment may bring you a lot of trouble. To be honest, even if you are a low-carbon environmentalist and are very sensitive to power consumption, expecting low-power WiFi is more important than relying on current ZigBee.
The above comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of WiFi and ZigBee is based on A's smart home usage. Looking back at A's all smart home components: lamps and sockets Needless to say, purifiers, humidifiers, etc. are plugged in for use. It is undeniable that the advantages of ZigBee's low power consumption can be doubled for smart home components that use batteries (remote controls, sensors, electronic locks, smoke alarms, etc.).
We can see that in order to take into account both plug-in and battery devices, Mijia has access to both WiFi and ZigBee. Whether this is based on the tactical considerations of individual products or the strategic considerations based on the overall situation of the Mi family is not known. For the Mi family, this kind of consideration may increase the cost; but for consumers, at least it is possible Needed.
Simple to rely on
It is true that ordinary users such as A have only reached the initial stage of smart homes. But from the big environment, we can guess that among the users of the Mijia Mall, there are also very few people who are skilled at using smart homes. The threshold for the use of smart homes is so high, which leads to a very serious problem: manufacturers can not only do smart home itself, but also think about how to sell it.
Therefore, although A's opinion on Jingdong Micro-Link is a one-sided statement, objectively speaking, the popularity of smart homes is actually stronger than that of Jingdong. Although Jingdong Micro's smart home products are not worse than Mijia, but we open a shopping mall between the two, we will find a very significant difference: In the Mi, you want to buy a thing, buy on the line; in Jingdong, you have to pick.
Of course, some people may say that freedom is the choice. It is the market economy that gives every consumer the right. However, combined with the cognitive threshold of the smart home itself, will you really be able to “shop†when you first touch the smart home?
Instead of recognizing Mi Jia's efforts to quietly cover all categories of smart homes, it's better to admire millet's strategy in the new retail sector. Jingdong may be as good as Xiaomi in terms of smart homes, but in the face of a variety of products that are overwhelming and its thick guidelines for use, powerful geeks may be overwhelming. And for most of the Mi products, you have to know that it is not necessary to use the manual at all.
Li Yanhong said Baidu culture is "easy to rely on". In the field of smart homes, Mi Jiacai really deserves these five words. HomeKit is expensive, Echo is not a guest, and JD's micro-organizers are messy. Each opponent's weakness is too conspicuous.
ODF
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