IT giants lay out smart homes, who will decide your living room?
Greg Laugle once envisioned a smart alarm clock in college, using an EEG scanner embedded in the alarm clock to monitor the user ’s brain waves, analyze the depth of sleep, and when the user is in light sleep. Its awake.
But when he told the professor the idea, the professor's words poured a pot of cold water on him.
"The EEG scanner is too expensive, and wearing it on the user's head will make them sleep worse."
Years later, Lange recalled that this was his most important lesson in transitioning from an engineer to an entrepreneur.
How to make a smart alarm clock with low cost and good user experience has been hovering in Lange's mind. During this period Lange also thought about using the watch as a carrier for smart alarm clocks, but had to give up due to compatibility issues.
One day ten years later, when he was playing with the iPhone, he suddenly realized that the smartphone in front of him was the perfect carrier of the smart alarm clock. Later, Lange and his friend and colleague Drew Shepard resigned from their original job as an electronic engineer and focused on the project. Soon they designed a smart alarm clock and named it Lumawake.
Lumawake is actually an iPhone dock with an infrared sensor embedded in it. When the user charges the iPhone at the head of the bed at night, the sensor can monitor the user's sleep. Coupled with an app that can be downloaded for free, users can clearly understand their sleep and health from the iPhone.
“This is the first practical Home AutomaTIon device to use during sleep.†Shepard, another founder of Lumawake, proudly told the reporter of China Entrepreneur.
When it comes to smart homes, one cannot but mention the concept of the Internet of Things. According to the definition of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Internet of Things (The Internet of things) is a network that allows all common physical objects that can be independently addressed to be interconnected.
Due to the characteristics of the enclosed space in the living room and bedroom, it has become a good carrier for the Internet of Things. In recent years, as the Internet has entered thousands of households, many people have begun to think about connecting the closed home system in their homes to the Internet, so that users can remotely control electrical appliances in their homes through the Internet in any corner of the world. But how to find a terminal control device that is portable and compatible with various electrical appliances is a problem.
Many years ago, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (Steve Wozniak) believed that he could invent a "Universal Remote Control" (Universal Remote Control) to control all electrical appliances, but due to the lack of stable connection media and other With the cooperation of electrical companies, Wozniak's ideas have always been difficult to realize.
This situation has changed with the advent of the mobile Internet era. A smart phone is not only an Internet terminal that can connect to all cloud devices, but also a small computer with sufficiently powerful computing power; its unified operating system can be used as an application development platform; at the same time, it is small enough to allow users to carry around.
All in all, a smartphone is a perfect universal remote control.
"We found that transferring the user interface to the iPhone can reduce costs and improve the user experience. We designed an interesting and practical product around it," Shepard said.
After completing the basic function of the alarm clock, Lange and Shepard designed some other functions around the iPhone. They found that it is difficult for users to find the base to charge the mobile phone after going to bed and turning off the light, so they built an LED bulb inside the base. When the iPhone is close to the base, the LED light will automatically emit light to help locate. With the LED lights, the two thought that they could add some other functions, such as the LED light will flash when an incoming call comes; after the alarm sounds, the lights hit the user's face to simulate sunrise, etc.
In fact, before Lumawake, many companies including Apple, Google and Microsoft have tried to enter the user's living room and bedroom to seize the smart home market. But they first aimed at the TV in the center of the living room. Over the past five years, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have developed software and hardware respectively, trying to transfer their own Internet resources to the TV, to achieve the attempt to occupy the user's living room. Apple ’s Apple Airplay and Apple TV, Google ’s Google TV, and Microsoft ’s Xbox have all reflected this trend. However, due to copyright and content reasons, the road to the IT giant's entry into the living room is heavy.
But while IT giants are stagnant, some small startups have quietly sneaked into users' living rooms and living rooms. They bypassed the TV and started with some other small electrical equipment. Around the terminal of the smartphone, they developed some amazing applications.
The first thing that caught people's attention was a startup called Nest Labs in California's Silicon Valley. It released a new thermostat device Nest in 2011. This device works with the iPhone to allow users to control the temperature in their homes through their smartphones. Nest is completely different from the old thermostat, it has a beautiful turntable like iPod and excellent self-learning ability. This intelligent thermostat not only allows users to monitor the temperature of the home anywhere, but also records the user's usage habits to save energy. This product, priced at $ 199, became popular in the United States immediately after it was launched, and it has firmly occupied the top position in the US thermostat market. It is worth mentioning that the founder of this company is Tony Fadell, the father of the famous iPod.
The success of startups in small smart homes has clearly stimulated IT giants. They have invariably chosen to close the distance with the former through acquisitions. Just three days before Christmas 2012, the Wall Street Journal first disclosed that Apple, Microsoft and Google are bidding for R2 Studios, a mysterious technology company. This small Silicon Valley company was founded in May 2011. It released an Android phone app last year that can control the heating and lighting systems in the home. The company's founder Blake Krikorian was previously an Amazon executive and board member.
The bidding soon yielded results. Just after the New Year's Day in 2013, the continuing follow-up of the "Wall Street Journal" confirmed that Microsoft finally won in this competition, but the final transaction amount was not disclosed. R2 was merged into Microsoft's Xbox department immediately after its acquisition, and its founder Krikorian served as Microsoft's vice president of interactive entertainment. The well-known technology media Engadget is very optimistic about this transaction, they think it can help Microsoft later to take the lead in the field of smart home to regain its lost advantage in the smartphone market. For the aforementioned IT giants, the battle for the living room and the living room has just begun.
In order to cope with the entry of IT giants, startup companies choose to cooperate on the platform of Internet of Things.
"We like the concept of the Internet of Things very much, it blurs the boundary between physical products and digital products." Shepard said.
Therefore, Lumawake and other smart home companies have designed some interesting applications. For example, in cooperation with Belkin Wemo, when the user falls asleep, the lights and TV in the home will automatically turn off; and when the user wakes up, the curtains will automatically open and the coffee machine will start working; in addition, Lumawake plans to work with another smart home company Smart Things cooperate to create an intelligent security system. When the user falls asleep, the security equipment in the home will automatically start.
Lange said that their products use an open application programming interface (API), which means that users can design some other applications according to their own needs.
According to the statistics of the survey agency Transparency, the global smart home market size was USD 16.9 billion in 2011. They predict that this market will grow at an average annual rate of 15.8% in the next few years and reach annual sales of USD 47.4 billion in 2018. A considerable portion of this will be created by small startups.
In contrast, in China far from the ocean, smart home companies have fallen far behind.
"China's smart home companies are basically developed by enterprises in the electrical, electrical, security and other industries." The Secretary-General of the Intelligent Committee of the China Interior Decoration Association said to Hongzhong, "The sensitivity of these companies is far behind . "
At present, some large electrical enterprises are leading in this field. Both Haier and Lenovo have developed some smart appliances such as smart TVs and smart refrigerators, but basically added some functions such as voice intelligence to the original appliances. "Their idea is to add some smart functions to the current system and connect them to the computer. But this is no longer applicable in the era of mobile Internet." Xianghong Zhong said.
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