Compared to 2015, there are not many entrepreneurs of smart hardware.
This is not because the smart hardware industry is coming to an end. On the contrary, in 2016, Apple Watch is hot, and the advantage of Dajiang in the drone industry is still stable. More is the hardware of Xiaomi---they continue to maintain a certain sales volume under the shade of Xiaomi, which seems to be a scene of desolateness with the outside world. insulation.
But there is no such thing as a bloody rainbow in the beginning of the millet bracelet.
This is a weird year. Putting any industry observations on smart hardware in December 2015 into December 2016, there will be almost no violations: living still alive; dead, maybe no one remembers its name.
If you have to entangle yourself in change, then there is less sound of singer-----or there are not many people who are willing to take the time to sing.
“Over the past 2016, we seem to be caught in a strange circle. No matter how we switch the track, as long as we are still in the smart hardware industry, there is almost no interest.†An entrepreneur who has been involved in multiple segments of wearables said . The institutions are not waiting to see, the media lacks interest, has long been the norm.
In addition to VR (virtual reality) is like a roller coaster-like attention, this year of intelligent hardware is undoubtedly lacking. Closing, layoffs, and transformation are almost the key words of the year. This once hot field left the ground feathers.
But the opportunity may have been bred in a bleak.
Bubble burst2015 is the glory of smart hardware.
iResearch's 2015 Smart Hardware Industry Data
According to the scale of China's intelligent hardware market provided by iResearch, the market size in 2015 increased by nearly 300% compared with 2014. The data provided by Jingdong also showed that the sales of Jingdong Intelligent Hardware increased nearly doubled in 2015, and the number of single products increased by 96% compared with 2014.
However, behind these glamorous data, it is the chaos after the industry bubble crushed rationality.
In addition to wristbands, scales, and speakers, which are not far from the concept of intelligence, everyday items such as tables, mirrors, and sockets have also been included in the smart list by crazy practitioners. Therefore, we saw a tablet computer with a table and a mirror in each public platform, and a "smart socket" that was sold with the addition of a wifi module.
That year, the smart hardware industry had a joke: As long as you went to Huaqiang North for an afternoon, you could make a smart hardware by patching together the components. What's not so funny is that this joke is a true fact in that year----practitioners can quickly get financing from VC in this way. This "toVC" mode hardware was once in some intelligence. The subdivision of hardware occupies more than half of the categories.
However, this round of “Shengshiâ€, which began in 2014, ushered in a turning point in the second half of 2015.
According to relevant data, in Q3 2015, the investment in the field of intelligent hardware suffered a sharp decline, from RMB 4.54 billion in Q2 to 570 million yuan. At the same time, according to incomplete statistics, although nearly 70 smart hardware companies in the country got financing in 2014, there are only a handful of companies that can get both B and B rounds.
The sentiment of the agency's wait-and-see attitude has spread rapidly from the fire of the stars, and by the end of 2015 some manufacturers relying on financing to maintain spending were unsustainable. But people are still optimistic that this is only a short-term callback.
At that time, affected by the stock market crash, the attitude of the RMB fund was cautious, and the steps of the US dollar fund were also slowing down. Many practitioners determined that as long as the fund level improved, the smart hardware would return to prosperity.
But obviously, this round of reversal is much longer than expected.
Hit back to the original shapeFunding is only one aspect. After the turning point, the original brain-filled investors and entrepreneurs calmed down and began to re-examine the rather special field of intelligent hardware.
Smart hardware has a longer product life than other areas of fire. Taking Dajiang Innovation as an example, although the market share of Dajiang has risen rapidly since the launch of the Elf 1 in 2012, if the date of establishment in 2006 is calculated, it will take 6 years for Dajiang to accumulate in technology.
Peng Fei, CEO of Extreme Flying Technology, said that due to the accumulation of advanced technologies, Dajiang has already taken a big advantage in the field of drones; if the manufacturers entering the latter stage follow the same route as Dajiang, it is almost difficult to succeed. After all, this time has already Behind the opponent for several years.
Beyond technology, the cycle of supply chain links is still amazing. Industry insiders admit to Tencent Technology that only one supply chain is enough to screen more than 80% of players. “A mature supply chain system often requires more than one year of construction, due to the distribution of interests among the various roles in the upstream and downstream of the supply chain. With the game, this process is difficult to shorten."
Not only that, but also a lot of capital investment in ODM, OEM, channel and other aspects, raw materials usually need to be advanced in advance, which means that in the preparation stage of intelligent hardware, it may need to invest more than imagined funds and time.
But these processes were almost ignored before and after 2015.
“At the time, the capital that entered the market did not really understand the industry.†A person who helped a number of smart hardware projects to complete financing said that many investors blindly plucked the track and expected to quickly produce explosives after investing heavily. I don't know if there is a long cycle in the hardware field. I just think that I can solve it by looking for a foundry.
This led to industry barriers that should have been established by the product cycle and supply chain, and did not occur as scheduled. In fact, in the hardware industry, technology accumulation and supply chain and channel advantages are far more important than creativity.
Since then, a large number of products lacking in technical content and using public models have been born, and the “prosperity†of intelligent hardware has evolved into a disorder.
Not only that, because of the lack of core competitiveness, such products that come and go are often only able to "get away with one stroke", and can not produce real explosions, nor can they make the company's value qualitatively change. This is reflected in the venture capital circle, which is that the data is ugly and no one is taking over. An institutional investment manager told Tencent Technology that investment institutions still value the question of when to withdraw and generate revenue. After a round of investment, the intelligent hardware did not produce sufficient persuasive results, which made the organization more cautious.
But perhaps, this "caution" should be the attitude that should be faced in the hardware field.
In the end, the particularity of the smart hardware industry still left the capital empty. It has been found that intelligent hardware should never follow the rules of the Internet---return to the hardware category, and intelligent hardware is likely to usher in opportunities.
From intelligent hardware to hardware intelligenceAfter returning to rationality, the threshold of intelligent hardware has finally been confronted.
According to the data of TalkingData, the current smart hardware fields such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Samsung and other manufacturers with certain technical reserves in the hardware field have occupied the mainstream; especially in the smart home field, the advantages are very obvious.
This also means that in the current mature players, if entrepreneurs want to enter the field of intelligent hardware, they must have certain hardware "hard power"; especially in the vertical segment, players with a certain accumulation, may usher in more In the big development period, on the contrary, entrepreneurs who lack accumulation are hard to break through in this increasingly rational field.
One example that can be corroborated is that in 2016, the music industry, which has been smashed in the industry, has become the first smart hardware company listed in China. Gao Xiang, the founding partner of Gaoxin Capital, a happy medical investor, said that Lexin Medical had provided products to high-end health hardware brands in Europe and the United States in the early stage. This is a major reason why Gaochun cares about happiness.
In fact, the 14 years of technical accumulation in medical equipment is also the foundation that Lexin Medical has long relied on. Pan Weichao, founder of Lexin Medical, said in an exclusive interview with Tencent Technology that he will not deliberately cater to the industry hotspots in the future, but will continue to invest in R&D in the spirit of the industry.
On the other hand, in addition to the entry threshold, the positioning of intelligent hardware is also quietly changing.
Although many investors love technology-oriented products, their final positioning of the product is certainly not limited to technology. Technology directly affects the “geeks†group, and this group is also the main user of the previous smart hardware; but the good products in the eyes of investors, the target population will be much larger, or even need to become mass consumer goods.
According to this line of thinking, in addition to some high-tech products such as robots (and related artificial intelligence), more intelligent hardware products need to be identified as consumer products, no longer playing "high on the card", but should be more Ground gas.
This is why more and more smart hardware is starting to go offline. Take the Mavericks electric car as an example. Niu Technology COO Li Yan told Tencent Technology that although online sales are still mainstream, by 2017, online and offline are likely to be flat; by 2018, offline sales may be Very much higher than online.
Offline channels have become a new arena. Whether the products can be quickly spread to the first and second lines, and even the third and fourth tier cities and towns are being more and more included in the team quality considerations.
An entrepreneur in the children's watch industry told Tencent Technology that an extreme example was that in Shandong, there was a hardware team backed by sales channels, and it relied on the offline sales network to get a lot of financing.
This is in the early days of the smart hardware industry, where the situation of investors can be persuaded by a crowdfunding channel.
It can be seen that the above series of requirements make the intelligent hardware field and the traditional hardware startup no longer have essential differences.
But this is not a bad thing.
Whether it is intelligent hardware or hardware intelligence, the product itself has to be highly practical, and this is precisely the lack of intelligent hardware. After returning to the traditional way of thinking, the intelligent hardware that was originally full of virtual fires is no longer as explosive as it was at the beginning, and it is very likely that it will return to the right path.
After all, in the age of the Internet of Things, intelligent hardware should not be absent.
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