Xiaomi pushes smart home products

In the new millet launch conference in early spring of 2015, rice noodles will find that the new mobile phone is no longer the focus of the audience spotlight. Instead, it is a variety of millet's smart home products. The mobile phone company that won the championship in the mobile phone market in China in 2014 is trying to change the public's impression and transform itself from a "smart phone brand" to a "smart hardware brand."

The industry has seen Xiaomi's actions: In the past year or so, Xiaomi has started cooperation with a number of smart hardware start-up companies and launched a number of products that test the water quality, and they also received a good degree of attention. However, a round of product distribution, purifiers, light bulbs, handles, plus previous TVs, routers ... ... each single product sales are not hot, far less successful millet phone. Competitors are not very interested in Xiaomi’s strategy: Major manufacturers are still competing in mobile phone shipments and profits, and are uncomfortable with smart hardware. Everyone is eyeing Apple's $18 billion terror revenue in a single quarter. Smart home, smart wear? Just play it just fine.

Millet did not "play." Lei Jun said that Xiaomi wants to be an Internet company rather than a mobile phone manufacturer. He is serious. Being an internet company does not mean abandoning hardware production. On the contrary, Xiaomi’s ambition is to provide consumers with a full set of smart devices. From mobile phones to watches, from televisions to vacuum cleaners, it is best to label all devices and appliances with “MI”. .

But this company, dubbed "coarse grain" by fans, is not planning to make big money on hardware. Instead, Xiaomi is trying hard to reduce the cost of each product it is preparing to produce, while maintaining gross margin at a very low level. Even if one day a rice flour family's electrical and electronic equipment comes from Xiaomi or partners, his net profit contribution to the idol brand is not necessarily comparable to an iPhone's gross profit.

Do Lei Jun hate interests? of course not. The ultra-low return rate of hardware products is only a means to achieve their ambition by “coarse grains”. The purpose is to allow consumers to quickly accept Xiaomi’s product system at a relatively low cost. The more millet products in the home, the stronger the user's dependence on the brand will be - whether it is a TV, a light bulb or a plug-in board, they will all have access to a unified account and be managed in one center. Other brands of equipment will appear to be This system is out of place. Once an ecosystem is established, it is exclusive. Consumers who quickly become accustomed to Xiaomi's ecology will not be interested in other platforms.

When rice flour is filled with the shadow of "coarse grains," Xiaomi can easily provide him with various value-added services. Insufficient refrigerator food, millet mobile phone automatically sent the recommended online shopping list; go home outside the home, millet camera provides third-party security platform for the host to remote housekeeping; bracelet detect the decline in user physique, TV automatically recommend fitness programs and applications... ... These services are not necessarily provided by Xiaomi, but it can be completely extracted from it. Even if the profit for a single service is small, it will still be an incredible gain.

This is an irresistible future: Every consumer's food, clothing, housing, and transportation are linked to a company. Almost all information services have the presence of this company. The profits behind it are far from selling several mobile phones and tablets. This is the Gillian model of technology companies: The latter loses money selling razors and gets a good return from high-margin blades. For millet, the variety of equipment is a tool holder, and the future service is the winning edge.

A thousand miles begins with a single step. To create an empire, we must first develop villages one by one. Millet, known for its cost-effective mobile phones, is unlikely to transition between days and nights. Not to mention the market for smart homes and smart wearable devices is still in its infancy. To this end, Xiaomi chose to lay out in advance and step by step: At the beginning, we only sold some fun products so that we all knew that we were not only doing mobile phones. Slowly, when Xiaomi’s partners are more and more, and the types of products they manage are gradually enriched, it naturally becomes the leader and standard setter of the domestic intelligent hardware industry. Anyway, competitors are concerned about the sales of the mobile phone sector, and almost no one confronts "coarse grains." By the time the ecosystem has been formed and the market no longer has room for the rise of others, the millennial dynasty will be able to dominate the world.

On the surface, today's millet can be described as "not a good job." It is a day to ponder some of the stuff that doesn't make any money yet. The teacher is mobilized to make a conference. The protagonist is a small product that other brands do not see. But behind these seemingly naive moves, the future giants are expanding their territory step by step, throwing away the distance from their opponents. If other brands continue to ignore or even disdain for this, it will inevitably have to pay a heavy price in the future.