On December 21, Huawei launched the Smart Screen S series, Smart Car Smart Screen, and Huawei’s whole-house smart ALL IN ONE solution at its Songshan Lake headquarters. Smart home has always been an area that Huawei has focused on, and at this press conference, Yu Chengdong said that Huawei’s whole-house smart solution will reconstruct the traditional networking, experience, ecology, and channels in the smart home field. Using information and logical operations, the whole-house smart solution will be brought to every family and will be officially commercialized in March 2021.
After the press conference, we had the honor to interview Zhi Hao, President of Wireless Broadband and Smart Home Product Line of Huawei Consumer Business Group. He gave us a more in-depth analysis of Huawei’s layout and thinking in the field of smart home and ecology. Zhi Hao said that Huawei will move forward step by step. Starting from the high-end, only by doing high-end can we influence this industry.
“We want to be the biggest player and have a real impact on this industry, so we have gradually started to launch the youth trend series, hoping to gain some market share. We have always required ourselves to be the largest mobile phone manufacturer, watch manufacturer, headset manufacturer, and router manufacturer in China in each field. Smart screens will also follow this rule. We are determined to be the largest smart screen manufacturer in China. We are gradually serializing our products. We have launched the V series, X series, and S series, and hope to make a success of these products.”
Zhi Hao also revealed that Huawei’s whole-home smart project was officially launched two or three years ago, and the product will be launched in March next year. The future is the era of smart homes, and creating a truly smart life will feel great. “All our offices are now going to be smart, because (the technology) is already very mature, but we have not launched it externally. This time we will officially launch the whole-home smart, and release the product in March next year.”
At present, Huawei has 42 partners in the whole-house smart home. How do they achieve mutual compatibility, collaboration of these products, and opening up the ecosystem? Zhi Hao explained that Huawei has established the PLC-IoT standard with 42 partners, and completed the interconnection of massive home hardware through the integration of power lines and control lines. Secondly, there are no problems with HiLink-based devices. Huawei’s smart products are all single systems, or some single systems, and cannot be fully connected and coordinated at home.
“We are talking about dividing the whole into 1+2+N, 1 is a smart host, 2 is two plane networks, which are interconnected, and N is our own equipment, including other equipment, to truly achieve a 1+2+N network, so this experience can solve the connection and coordination problems I just mentioned. Faster, stable for user experience.” Zhi Hao added. You don’t feel its cumbersomeness, but its convenience, it is really easy to use, this is called smart home.
Nowadays, the sales of large-screen products are declining, and the frequency of users changing phones is very low. Zhi Hao believes that the smart screen is something completely different. It is an IOT control center, an intelligent interaction center, a cross-screen experience center, and an entertainment center. Next year, Huawei will create five scenarios: video, music, games, education, and health. We will use AI and distributed support to deepen and thoroughly develop these five scenarios. Not only that, many innovative software features brought by the new S series products will upgrade old devices, allowing users to use smart screens “often new”. There will be new things every six months, and consumers will have expectations.
The most important thing for smart home devices is the user experience. The Smart Screen S series has four major centers, “often used and always new”, and five core scenes, video, music, games, education, and health. These five scenes are constantly polished and then launched to truly let consumers feel the good things in this big screen. Let consumers live a truly simple, easy-to-use, and unfelt smart life. This is the smart experience.
After-sales service of smart home products is also a problem that users are very concerned about. This is also one of the core issues in the future, and it is also a necessary team for Huawei to do a good job in the enterprise. Zhi Hao believes that the most important thing about whole-house intelligence is after-sales service and future maintenance. At the end of the year, Huawei will cooperate with fully-equipped real estate and assist in maintenance. By next year, service experience stores will be opened one after another, and there may be hundreds of them by next year. Speaking of the future form of smart homes, Zhi Hao said that only complete and unified ones can arouse consumers’ desire to buy. With the continuous development of AI technology, everyone’s house will become the carrier of smart homes in the future.
Regarding the short-term goals for next year, Zhi Hao said that Huawei still has to pursue, and the goal of smart screens needs to be doubled. Currently, the S series has been released, and the second generation of the V series is about to be released. Huawei’s NPS and user awareness are the most important. However, user awareness is not enough at present. Zhi Hao hopes that user awareness can reach 60% next year.
