Appliance giant accelerates the pace of intelligence

Following Haier and Changhong, recently the U.S.-based group has officially released a smart home strategy and will implement the "1+1+1" plan, which is "a smart butler system + an M-Smart interactive community + an M-BOX management center" to achieve all Home appliances interconnect and communicate. Gree also said that it will focus on energy and the environment as its focus on the development of smart homes. The steps taken by home appliance giants toward smart home appliances are clearly accelerating.

From single product intelligence to smart home evolution

"In the future, Midea will implement unified internal and external agreements to achieve interconnection, interoperability, and mutual understanding of all home appliances." Cai Qiwu, senior vice president of Midea Group, said that the US smart service sector will include "air wisdom stewards." "Nutritional wisdom steward", "water health wisdom steward", "energy security wisdom steward" and other parts.

According to Cai Qiwu, in 2013, Midea has completed the development of eight categories of smart products, and smart products of two categories have been sold. In 2014, the smart new products of Midea Group will accelerate its listing and it is expected that 25 categories will be launched in succession. Only in March 2014, Midea’s subsidiary had the US smart kitchen and Midea’s smart air-conditioning two series of products on the market. Intelligent electric water heaters, air purifiers, and central air conditioners will also be launched in the first half of the year.

Midea also announced that it will invest 15 billion yuan in the next three years for the development of smart homes in the United States. With the Internet of Things and cloud computing technologies, Midea Group will transform from a traditional home appliance manufacturer into a smart home builder, and by 2018, smart home Product sales will account for 50% of the US's overall sales.

Vice President of Gree Electric Appliances and Chief Engineer Huang Hui recently said in an interview with the media that this year will focus on the development of smart homes, "with energy and the environment as the center." Gree will integrate smart chips into its products to collect information on product locations, power usage, temperature, user habits, etc., and create digital files of user information. These files will be stored in cloud energy management services. "Big data" is only the first step for Gree. After having data information, Gree's plan is to become the family's energy center. Through the use of electricity data to analyze the electricity situation, Gree will push energy saving solutions for users through cloud optimization, users can save electricity charges, and Gree hopes to collect energy management fees according to the power saving situation.

Platforms enable cross-brand sharing

Smart home is not just a single smart appliance. For this issue, Huang Hui also said that smart homes are not just products involving Gree, and they hope to connect with each other on a single platform. However, Gree did not disclose how this platform was established. Industry experts believe that the interconnection of different smart home appliances is the bottleneck of current smart home development.

It is worth noting that besides the interoperability between Midea’s products, Midea’s open protocols and multiple interfaces are compatible to achieve cross-brand sharing. “America’s Smart Home will establish an ecological chain, and the future will include more Internet companies including Tencent and others. Cooperation, and the country is also promoting the introduction of smart home standards.

At present, Ali and Huawei have joined the US smart community open system. Huawei provides hardware devices and Ali provides software support. Future America’s group will increase investment in R&D. In 2014, the total R&D investment of each business unit of the United States will reach 4 billion yuan, and cumulative investment will reach 15 billion yuan in the next three years. It is also understood that Midea will also set up a global headquarters for research and development in Shunde, and will invest nearly 3 billion yuan as a smart home incubation base.