China has the world's largest and fastest-growing smart industry market, with industries such as smart homes, smart wearables, smart cars, and smart equipment having enormous market potential. Since 2013, the intelligent industry centered around smart hardware has achieved rapid growth and development, with a constant stream of products in different categories. The industry has shown an explosive growth trend.
China has the world's largest and fastest-growing smart industry market, with industries such as smart homes, smart wearables, smart cars, and smart equipment having enormous market potential. Since 2013, the intelligent industry centered around smart hardware has achieved rapid growth and development, with a constant stream of products in different categories. The industry has shown an explosive growth trend. However, we also see that the emerging smart hardware industry is currently in a state of "disorder". Although there are many start-ups engaged in the development and production of products in this field at home and abroad, there is still no unified device communication protocol and platform for smart hardware in the industry. It is expected that starting from the 13th Five Year Plan, the third industrial revolution represented by cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence will put us on the same starting line as Western industrialized countries for the first time and participate in the competition of a new round of intelligent industrial revolution. In the next three to five years, whether in the field of financial Internet, Internet of Vehicles or intelligent product development and application, with the continuous expansion of customers' demand for intelligent product experience, the intelligent product market will gradually become standardized and orderly, with a more transparent price system and a more orderly competition mechanism. From the perspectives of technology, products, industrial chain links, enterprises, market patterns, capital, policies, and carriers, the following major development trends will gradually emerge and deepen.
1、 Further deepening and upgrading of application technology, intelligent products tend towards specialization
With the in-depth development of big data, Internet of Things technology, cloud computing technology, mobile Internet technology, social network platform technology, etc., modern science and technology service industry is increasingly endowed with the concept of intelligence, and gradually realizes the extension and upgrading on the basis of the existing industry. In addition, from the perspective of application hotspots, intelligent products are gradually penetrating into all dimensions of work and life scenarios, coupled with the development of artificial intelligence, 3D printing technology, speech recognition technology, etc., the interconnection and intercommunication between products and between products and people will become increasingly important in the future.
From the current form of products in the field of intelligence, they mainly appear in the form of wearable devices. From the specific application areas, they mainly focus on daily life applications, with smart homes, smart healthcare, smart health, and in car intelligence as the main hot topics. In addition, in the field of intelligent manufacturing, although some progress has been made in the practice of industrial robots, traditional industries and manufacturing will still face a long-term process of gradually deepening and transforming from traditional methods to intelligence. Whether in terms of investment or technological implementation, there will be a transition and development period of three to five years. We predict that in the future, the vertical industries of the intelligent industry will continue to deepen and refine, with clearer industry boundaries and division of labor. The further clarification of the business areas of intelligent enterprises will also lead to the gradual professionalization of intelligent products.
2、 The industrial chain is constantly expanding and extending, and the trend of software hardware integration and industrial integration is becoming more apparent
The intelligent industry chain will continue to expand and extend. The industry chain will horizontally expand from hot areas such as intelligent hardware to smart services, smart cities, smart tourism, smart manufacturing, and smart living. Vertically, it will extend from upstream research and development design, production and manufacturing to downstream end consumers and users, and the industry chain will be further improved. In addition, from the perspective of the participating roles in each link of the industrial chain, they mainly include e-commerce platforms, hardware integrators, third-party platforms, crowdfunding, makers, end consumers, etc. The synergistic effect between them will be enhanced with the continuous improvement of the industrial chain. In this well-developed industry chain, we believe that the concept of O2O will run through the entire process of intelligent product development, from front-end research and design, demand analysis, to final product experience and sales. In the future, products will become a part of people and will be the highest level of intelligent product development. Therefore, fully emphasizing the importance of customer engagement, meeting customers' personalized needs, and grasping the concept of demand chain management from user needs to product development are necessary to stand out in future intelligent competition.
In addition, we mentioned earlier that the intelligent industry is not an independent and new industry, but a product of the convergence of the mobile Internet and the traditional manufacturing industry. After the wait-and-see period of commercialization exploration, the intelligent industry will be the next trend industry, and the only industry that can endow the mobile Internet with physical attributes in the mobile Internet era. In the ecosystem created by the cross-border industry of intelligent industry, entrepreneurs, Internet enterprises and traditional manufacturing industries will all be a supporting role, or a "component". In the future, the definition of industries will become increasingly blurred, with more emphasis on industry integration. There is no one who can overturn others, but who can develop better products to serve users. At the same time, for the field of intelligence, all hardware products in the future will gradually move towards intelligence, and in this process, hardware is only the carrier, while the core of added value lies in services. Therefore, the trend of software hardware integration and industrial integration will become more apparent in the future.
3、 The market pattern of the intelligent industry, with various intelligent enterprises as the main competitors, will gradually take shape
The arrival of each industrial era will hasten the entry of a number of innovative and entrepreneurial enterprises, including the budding and initial stages of the intelligent industry, which is very similar to the wave of mobile Internet boom in 2007. The emerging intelligent hardware industry in recent years is still in a "disorder", and a number of large, medium and small enterprises have emerged from various industries into the intelligent hardware industry. For example, Xiaomi and JD.com are using their sales and after-sales channel advantages to quickly enter the market by entering smart hardware manufacturers; Google directly develops smart home products by acquiring smart home companies, and quickly occupies the market by creating popular products; Tencent uses its advantages in social networks to occupy the entrance of mobile Internet to enter the intelligent field; Baidu has improved its technological level in areas such as big data, voice control, and gesture interaction through platforms or bet routers. In addition, there are numerous innovative and entrepreneurial enterprises as well as traditional manufacturers entering the smart market, which shows us that in the next two to three years, the industry and enterprises will exhibit explosive growth. At the same time, this will also be a process of washing away sand, which will promote the continuous clarification of industrial lines and product directions. Competitive enterprises will stand out and form a certain distribution and pattern.
4、 The integration of industry and city has gradually become a major principle to be followed in the aggregation of intelligent industries
Objectively speaking, the aggregation and development of intelligent industries require the construction of physical space and soft environment, coupled with the development trend of intelligent industries and the development concept of industry city integration. Intelligence is the main feature of smart city and smart park construction, and smart city is also a manifestation of industry city integration. At the same time, the development concept of "integration of work and residence, integration of industry and city, and symbiosis between industry and commerce" emphasized by the integration of industry and city, as well as the construction of carriers and service models, are more in line with the centralized demand for various elements of the industry in various stages of the development of intelligent enterprises. In addition, with the rapid development and maturity of the intelligent industry, the definition of industry and urban areas will become increasingly blurred and gradually converge. In addition, with the rise and return of urban manufacturing industry, modern intelligent manufacturing will also have some functions in the layout and positioning of urban centers. The gradual promotion and trial of the integration of industry and city will also promote the better aggregation and development of intelligent industries.
5、 From the current direction of investment and financing in the intelligent industry, intelligent hardware will be a hot topic in the next two to three years
KPCB's ten-year technology cycle shows that smart hardware will become a hot topic for investment institutions and enterprises starting from 2014, with strong focus and capital pursuit. According to statistics, there were a total of 123 investment transactions in cutting-edge and hot areas of hardware innovation in 2013, with a disclosed transaction volume of 1.44 billion US dollars. As of June 2014, 62 Chinese smart hardware companies in the fields of smart wearables, smart healthcare, and smart homes have obtained financing. From the perspective of product form, the current investment hotspots and directions in smart hardware are mainly concentrated in the field of wearable devices. However, the current positioning of wearable products is not clear enough, and the industry chain still needs to mature and improve. Downstream developers have a high degree of dependence on solution providers, weak research and development capabilities, and high risks. The outbreak of wearable products has been delayed, and the shipment volume is lower than expected. Therefore, it may still take time for wearable smart devices to move from niche to mass market.
6、 High end intelligent industry will become a key cultivation area during the 13th Five Year Plan period
In China's 12th Five Year Plan, the cultivation of high-end intelligent industries is identified as a key area, mainly covering the following areas: firstly, major complete sets of equipment that meet the transformation and upgrading requirements of traditional industries such as petrochemicals, metallurgy, and coal, such as energy conservation and consumption reduction, automation, and intelligence; The second is the complete set of equipment required for major projects in energy conservation, environmental protection, and resource development and utilization, such as nuclear power, new energy, smart grids, etc; The third is the basic components and instruments. At present, China's instrumentation industry is very weak, with foreign mid to high end instruments, components, and sensors accounting for over 60% of the domestic market share, and half of the domestic demand relying on imports.
The high-end intelligent industry will present a development trend of automation, integration, informatization, and greening. To ensure the sustainable development of the high-end intelligent industry, it is necessary to have strong support from industrial research and services. The government needs to support the construction of public service platforms and research and development platforms, and provide financial support. Value added services and vigorously develop modern manufacturing service industry. Transforming from production-oriented manufacturing to service-oriented manufacturing, and shifting from single product manufacturing to simultaneous service provision.
In summary, the next decade will be an era of ubiquitous intelligence, where everything is intelligently interconnected. Intelligence will enter an accelerated diffusion stage, and consumers will be stimulated to demand intelligent applications in more and more segmented scenarios. Chips, communications, materials, sensing, and even biotechnology will continue to advance, and the trend of interconnectivity and intelligence in all things is irreversible. In the demand segment, with the popularization and usage habits of existing smart terminals, there is a greater and more segmented demand for the application of smart terminals among consumers; On the supply side, with the increasing performance of computer processing technology, smaller size and power consumption, faster transmission speed of communication technology, and continuous improvement of sensing technology accuracy, more and more hardware products will achieve intelligence in the future, and the trend of pan intelligence is coming. The integration of "hardware+software+services" is becoming increasingly common, and enterprises are striving for speed in their transformation. The software and hardware form and ecosystem of the pan intelligent terminal have not been formed. The hardware, software and Internet enterprises that are good at serving consumers are also working hard to penetrate each other and compete for transformation speed. The strategic thinking, organizational structure, and existing core competitiveness of each enterprise will determine its positioning and prospects in the integration game. (China Outsourcing Network)
