Home appliance giant "crazy roll" AI, TCL smart home accelerates "smart evolution"

Bronco Finance

2024-05-10 20:04Posted on the official account of Shanxi Mustang Finance

Pointing to the "global leading", how will TCL Smart Home exert its strength?

Author | Zhao Qing

Editor丨Gao Yuanshan

Source | Bronco Finance

The "invisible home appliance giant", which has won the championship of China's refrigerator exports for 15 consecutive years, has made big moves.

On the evening of May 9, Omar Electric (002668. SZ) issued an announcement on the completion of the industrial and commercial change registration, the company name was changed from "Guangdong Omar Electric Co., Ltd." to "Guangdong TCL Smart Home Appliances Co., Ltd.", and from May 10, 2024, the company's securities abbreviation was officially changed from "Omar Electric" to "TCL Smart Home" (the new abbreviation "TCL Smart Home" is used hereafter).

At the same time, the business scope in the "Articles of Association" has also been greatly "expanded", and a number of contents involve the popular directions of "unbooking" of home appliance giants, such as "intelligence", "artificial intelligence" and "Internet of Things".

Behind these changes is an important strategic upgrade of TCL Smart Home for the future.

"Facing the future, the company will be committed to becoming the world's leading smart home appliance company", TCL Smart Home said that the name change can more clearly reflect the company's future strategic development layout, which is conducive to further enhancing the company's brand image and value, accelerating the implementation of the company's globalization strategy, and enhancing the market competitiveness of the company's high-end products.

At present, under the interweaving of various conditions, Chinese home appliance brands are ushering in a new development opportunity.

On the one hand, major breakthroughs in artificial intelligence technology have pushed smart homes into a new stage of development, and huge emerging needs are constantly being generated; On the other hand, with the continuous breakthrough of many excellent domestic home appliance brands in core technology, the ability of enterprises to reduce costs and increase efficiency has gradually emerged, and the competitiveness of going overseas has been continuously improved, and Chinese home appliances have also begun to promote the in-depth development of globalization, which is expected to gain more share, voice and initiative in the international market.

Looking at this opportunity to upgrade the strategic upgrade of TCL smart home, what are the hole cards? And how do you plan to move towards your goal? Looking at TCL Smart Home under the new strategic goals, how much has its future imagination increased?

01

Sanyu Deer

Traditional home appliance companies are scheduled to be qualified for the "finals".

Safety, convenience, comfort and artistry, smart homes, including smart home appliances, have long begun to develop, but due to the bottleneck of related technologies, they have been trapped in various pain points for a long time. With the breakthrough development of AI technology behind ChatGPT, smart home is also entering a new stage.

In the face of the rapid growth of huge market demand, not only traditional home appliance companies, but also a number of cross-border players have begun to enter the layout. At present, the mainland smart home market can be divided into three camps - traditional home appliance companies represented by Haier and other enterprises; hardware giants represented by Huawei and Xiaomi; and Internet companies represented by "BAT".

The "final" of smart home is very likely to be between the traditional home appliance camp and the hardware giants. According to the analysis of Huibo Consulting, the Internet camp is mainly based on ecological construction, and it is still small in the future, and it may have a wide and in-depth layout in the field of smart home products. The competition in the field of smart home products will be concentrated in traditional home appliance manufacturers and hardware companies.

At present, for smart home, the technology, products, and layout ideas of the two camps of giants have become increasingly mature, and each has its own advantages.

The biggest advantage of traditional home appliance enterprises lies in product power and brand power. Because it already has a complete product system, especially in mature markets such as air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, etc., it has formed deep barriers, and traditional home appliance giants tend to build a smart home full product model.

Taking Haier Smart Home as an example, in 2022, it will officially launch the "1+3+5+N" whole-house smart solution, which is to build a full-product model of smart home with large electrical products as the core. At present, Haier Smart Home has launched many smart home scenarios such as the Internet of Clothes (washing machines as the core) and the Internet of Food (refrigerators, ovens, etc. as the core).

Source: Canned Gallery

The hardware giants represented by Huawei and Xiaomi have outstanding advantages in ecology and technology.

Smart home is roughly divided into three stages of development, the first stage of single product intelligence, the second stage of multi-scene linkage, and the third stage of human-computer interaction. The interconnection between single products to achieve scene connectivity is the primary technology that needs to be broken through under the concept of whole-house intelligence. In this regard, Huawei, which started with communications, naturally has inherent advantages.

In terms of systems and intelligent hardware, Huawei not only has the HarmonyOS system, but also deploys cloud, device, and core manufacturers, and has a very complete underlying support in terms of intelligent connection solutions.

Huawei leverages its core strengths to build an open-source smart home system. The "1+2+N" whole-house intelligent solution released in April 2021 adopts the PLC+Wifi6 wiring scheme, uses PLC wiring to lay a good "foundation" for front-mounted wiring, and gives the stable interface of each equipment that is included later; It also connects its devices to its own ecosystem by exporting Wi-Fi modules, Bluetooth modules, and video modules that can be integrated into smart hardware to its partners.

In terms of ecology, Xiaomi has built its own Mijia ecology. Xiaomi is an early layout in the smart home ecology, and it has quickly penetrated the market to gain a high share by launching a large number of cost-effective products in multiple categories in the era of single products. At present, Xiaomi's products cover a variety of categories horizontally, and vertically also cover high, medium and low-end. The core advantage of the Mi Home ecosystem is integration, and it is also constantly expanding and improving, and it is expected to be deeply integrated with more intelligent hardware in the future.

Source: Canned Gallery

02

Benchmark against leading players

How does TCL Smart Home catch up?

As a traditional home appliance camp, TCL Smart Home, how does it make efforts in smart home?

It is worth mentioning that smart home appliances have given birth to an industrial chain that is quite different from traditional home appliances. However, at present, traditional home appliances are still the mainstream of the market, and enterprises cannot abandon them, and in the face of the future trend of smart home appliances, they must continue to invest. Therefore, one of the first issues is to balance the development of new and old businesses.

TCL Smart Home has also long considered, it said that after the company's name change, its subsidiary TCL Household Appliances (Hefei) Co., Ltd. will deepen the "TCL" independent brand, focus on the high-end ice washing business, and promote the globalization strategy. Guangdong Omar Refrigerator Co., Ltd., a subsidiary, will continue to maintain the independent trade name of "Omar" and the positioning of "global professional refrigerator ODM supplier".

In 2019, TCL proposed an AI × IoT full-scenario strategy, which refers to user needs, IoT device capabilities and AI capabilities, and the interaction and deep integration of the three. Different from the simple empowerment of a single device by AI+IoT, AI×IoT is the direction of further integration and development of AI and IoT.

Also relying on product advantages, TCL Industry (the indirect controlling shareholder of TCL Smart Home) has launched Lingxi C12 A full set of AI home appliances, including smart screens, refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, smoke stoves, smart screen switches, smart door locks, smart security and other home appliances, among which refrigerators and washing machines are TCL smart home products.

In terms of single product intelligence, TCL Smart Home has precipitated many technical achievements. For example, in response to the needs of refrigerator preservation, TCL AI technology builds a food database and knowledge graph through intelligent algorithms to optimize the efficiency of food ingredient management, and intelligently displays information such as the freshness of ingredients and the best expiration date in real time, bringing users a more intelligent and healthy food storage experience.

For another example, the TCL C16 Twin Cabin Smart Classification Washing Expert Washing Machine integrates AI intelligent recognition technology, which can accurately identify the color, material, stain degree and washing needs of clothes, so as to automatically formulate personalized washing plans to achieve better washing results.

Not only is the single product intelligent, but under the product logic of "external display and inner core, screen connecting everything", TCL Lingxi C12 full set of AI home appliances opens up smart home scenarios such as audio-visual entertainment, cooking deliciousness, intelligent security, and healthy fresh air.

With the smart screen system UI5.0 as the full-scene intelligent system, and through the Honghu cloud platform, self-developed Wi-Fi module, octopus cloud audio and video service and other technologies, TCL has built a number of intelligent scenarios for cross-screen circulation and other full-category interconnection, and finally realized the full implementation of AIoT capabilities such as interconnection and distributed intelligent voice interaction at the product level.

It is worth mentioning that,LingxiC12A full set of household appliances also breaks the single connection of smart home appliances、Control mode,That is, it does not have a fixed "control center",There are always electrical appliances in the right scene to respond to demand,TV in the living room、Air conditioning in the bedroom、Refrigerator and integrated stove in the kitchen, etc.,It can be the source of control of other smart home appliances。

At the same time, different from the traditional "smart home appliances", based on the design idea of scene intelligent interconnection, C12 sets of home appliances are generally based on smart screen display or camera visualization to achieve efficient interconnection and interoperability of various scenes at home.

Of course, although it has a certain accumulation in technology, products, etc., TCL Smart Home chooses to benchmark the most leading enterprises in all aspects of the industry to catch up. Among them, the most important is technology improvement, which is directly related to brand building and cost advantage.

Adhering to independent innovation, TCL Smart Home continues to increase R&D investment. From 2021 to 2023, TCL Smart Home's R&D expenditure will be 357 million yuan, 471 million yuan, and 542 million yuan respectively; The number of R&D personnel is 752, 899 and 894 respectively.

TCL Smart Home can also strengthen cooperation with scientific research institutions, universities, etc., introduce and cultivate high-end talents, build a complete R&D system, and continuously improve its independent innovation capabilities.

However, because smart home is a field of multi-technology integration, covering the Internet of Things, automatic control, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, information security and many other technologies, it is almost impossible to rely on their own comprehensive leadership, and the market competition is time waits for no one. Therefore, TCL Zhijia is bound to take the initiative to "borrow".

This aspect can be used as a reference in the automotive industry, where the process of intelligence is relatively fast. For example, among private car companies, Geely entered the new energy sector a little late, but actively "married" with Internet companies to rapidly improve its technological advantages; Volkswagen has accelerated its intelligent transformation by investing in Xpeng Motors.

At present, in terms of smart home, TCL Smart Home still has a certain gap with some companies, but from another point of view, TCL Smart Home has the advantage of being a latecomer, which can directly refer to mature experience, or cooperate with advanced enterprises, and can also integrate the best of each family. Moreover, smart home is still in the process of advancement, the pattern is undecided, and there are still opportunities for overtaking in corners.

In addition, it is worth mentioning that the increase in the value of software in the intelligent era does not mean that hardware is no longer important, and TCL Smart Home has precipitated deep basic advantages in the supply chain, brand and channel.

In terms of the market, as of 2023, TCL Smart Home's Omar refrigerator has ranked first in China's refrigerator exports for 15 consecutive years, and ranked first in China's refrigerator exports to Europe for 16 consecutive years, and the company's TCL brand refrigerators and washing machines have ranked among the top five in the industry in domestic sales. In 2023, TCL Smart Home's overseas revenue will increase by 51.95% year-on-year.

03

Strive to cover all scenes

How much room will there be for imagination?

With two core production and operation entities of Hefei home appliances and Omar refrigerators, TCL Smart Home's current main products include refrigerators (including freezers) and washing machines. However, with the advancement of the new strategy, TCL Smart Home undoubtedly has a broader imagination space.

Whole-house intelligence has become an inevitable trend in the development of smart home appliances. At present, the intelligent scene solutions that have been realized involve smart home and entrance, smart living room, smart kitchen, smart restaurant, smart bedroom, smart toilet and other scene applications. In each of these scenarios, there are a lot of products that contain intelligent upgrade needs.

Taking the smart living room as an example, according to the Guosen Securities Brokerage Research Institute, in addition to common smart home appliances such as TVs, at least 11 types of smart home appliances such as smart curtain machines, smart drying racks, smoke detection alarms, and sweeping robots are involved.

According to Verified Market Research, the market size of optical smart home appliances will reach $77.7 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 13.4% from 2023 to 2030.

Looking at the smart home market, according to the data of the Toubao Research Institute, the size of China's smart home market in 2021 will be about 336 billion yuan, with a compound growth rate of 3% in the past five years, and is expected to reach 436.7 billion yuan in 2026, with a compound growth rate of 5%; According to Statista data, the global smart home market size will be about $123 billion in 2021 and will reach $204 billion in 2026, with a compound growth rate of 11%.

The huge market space can be expected in the future, and back to the present, how should TCL Smart Home accelerate the development of domestic and international markets?

At present, many excellent domestic home appliance brands continue to make breakthroughs in core technologies, the ability of enterprises to reduce costs and increase efficiency is gradually emerging, and the competitiveness of going overseas is constantly improving.

But if you want to go more thoroughly on the international route, you can't just rely on good quality and low price, to ensure that new household appliances continue to be launched and take the lead, and at the same time, you must not ignore the building of your own brand, only the strength and value of your own brand, in order to support the enterprise to go further.

In the domestic home appliance market, the competition pattern will be basically laid around 2010, and TCL Smart Home can increase its market share through the high-end brand path of consumption upgrading.

What smart home appliances do you have in your home now, and which home appliances are you looking forward to intelligently? Feel free to leave a comment.

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