Smart hardware to hot sale five hurdles

Under the smart hardware line, Sharon, several senior professionals from the field of smart hardware production, R&D and sales shared their views on the industry and products. The author combined with Sharon to share and understand their own understanding, intelligent hardware from hot to hot sale is still five hurdles.

The first is user demand: users need more than data, facts and simple controls, but practical solutions.

Current smart hardware products focus on the product itself and focus on the user's needs. To provide users with more data, to provide practical solutions through data analysis less, and some products provide data is not accurate, such as certain wristbands. Some products simply install the control module and control it through the mobile phone, which is called the intelligent hardware. If the mobile phone controls the light, it is simple and crude and does not solve the real needs of the user.

Smart hardware should not be a starting point, nor should it be an endpoint. It is just a process tool that provides users with life solutions through smart hardware and provides a new life concept and lifestyle. Therefore, products and technologies should not be used for products, but should not bring more information anxiety, more operational troubles and unaccustomed habits to users. The correct way is to fully understand the needs of users, to solve the pain points of users through the product, to help users have a healthy, convenient and comfortable lifestyle without greatly changing the user's living habits.

The second is product development: What is needed is not rapid iteration, ultimate thinking, but better experience, more scenarios, and greater industry space.

With Internet thinking to build products, often the concept of playing early, frequent product skipping, mass production is more difficult; products just made, it was copied, copied. The giant card position has monopolized the product development space; there has been a strange phenomenon of “doing more platforms and less products”.

Rapid iterations, extreme thinking, and so on in Internet thinking do not apply. Because of the high process and quality requirements of smart hardware, the product has a long cycle, rapid iteration, and high quality reputation. Product development is based on the needs of users. The attention of users is often not one or two functions of intelligence, but a better experience, enough application scenarios. A product that only has monitoring capabilities, even if it does what it does best, does not have much practical value for the user if it does not have a function to regulate air quality. For young entrepreneurs, it is the best time and the worst time. There is plenty of room for innovation. At the same time, the advance layout and card slots of the giants will bring the future to the small entrepreneurs: they will either die or be acquired.

The third is the sales channels: Online promotion is difficult to sell, and users focus on experience. O2O is a good sales method.

The current problem is that sales of smart hardware are often on official websites, or on platforms such as JD.com and Tmall. Online channels sell mostly, and offline channels are less developed. The concept of sourcing products to users is mostly to give users actual experience. Less.

Online propaganda, easy to quickly cover larger groups of people and play a good effect. However, there are certain disadvantages in selling online. If the user does not know what the smart hardware does or does, how can he easily buy it? Offline experience is an indispensable link. Therefore, more sales of smart hardware should take into consideration the sales offices of Digital China, Suning, Gome, and even operators. In these 3C and digital office stores, it is easier to transform customers into real users through experiential marketing. Therefore, the O2O model of online promotion and offline sales is a better way. When a product forms a certain sales scale, there is a certain amount of space for online sales through word of mouth.

The fourth is the profit model: "Hardware Free" raises the industry's threshold, and product brands, software and services have not received due recognition.

Under the advocacy of Internet companies, the concept of "hardware free" is deeply rooted in people's minds. When you see smart hardware products, many people start with the price of their BOM and make judgments about the value, leaving no room for the brand. While thinking that hardware should be zero profit, there is not enough recognition for the value of software and services.

Internet companies try to make money through the value-added services such as information and advertising behind the hardware, or cash out through user behavior data that has been precipitated by the built-in software. However, for some simple products, there is no room for cash. On the other hand, when the product sales volume is small, pre-sales are used. Once the scale comes up, it will face the problem of inventory control. For small entrepreneurs, the ability to burn money and risk is limited, and they still need to seek profits from hardware. Hardware free is the game of giants. The high-profit era has not yet experienced, 79 yuan millet bracelet and other products have been massacre. Next, the profit model will be the biggest test. Entrepreneurs just want to collect the money of investors, or want to do it for a long time, it is a problem.

Fifth, industry rules: In the face of hot money inflows, disorderly competition, and high customer expectations, it is even more necessary to abandon the impetuous and pragmatic practitioners.

From the fourth quarter of last year to the first quarter of this year, smart hardware quickly began to fire, capital inflows, faster than the pace of development of the industry, investors looking for projects in Sichuan. For a time, competition in the industry has rapidly increased, and there have been a large number of practitioners before there is a decent product. Improper publicity raises the expectations of users, and often there is no sense for smart devices during the experience: this is also called smart devices. Where is intelligence? .

The development of the industry is regular and gradual. It takes a certain period of time for the industry to grow to a small technological innovation and product innovation to be widely accepted by users. After the incubation of smart hardware business in 2013, it still failed to in-depth marketization. Entrepreneurial teams are mostly small teams and members have extensive hardware, software, or Internet experience, but they are not good at markets, brands, public relations, channels, and corporate governance. The intelligent hardware manufacturing industry chain is still in the run-in period, and product problems are inevitable; users also need to “educate” and “cultivate”, and products that are lower than expected are inevitable. Too many practitioners and plagiarism are not good or bad. Competitors are not friends, but this era. What is needed is that more practitioners can abandon the irrelevance of Internet thinking and do a useful job. Time is fair and it will highlight the real value.