Edit | Paul Yu Pin
Produced by Chaoqi. com "See the column"
Many enterprises have racked their brains to be listed in the big enterprise ecosystem, but aqara, a green rice in the Xiaomi ecosystem, insists on breaking the circle and actively decoupling the rice chain. At present, many enterprises want to join the giant’s ecological circle for their long-term development, but green rice aqara, who is in the Xiaomi ecological circle, chooses to jump out of the comfort zone and gradually go Xiaomi.
At present, smart home is on the eve of the outbreak, and its market scale is growing rapidly. According to IDC data, it is estimated that by 2024, the market scale of smart home in China is expected to exceed 500 billion yuan, and the market shipment of smart home equipment will increase to about 500 million units, with a compound annual growth rate of 23%.
And because of its large population, China will be the most potential smart home market in the world. Faced with such a huge market, many giants have entered the market one after another, and different enterprises have established their own ecological circles. According to the restrictions of relevant agreements, it is difficult for various hardware devices joining different ecological circles to be compatible.
Therefore, in order to develop rapidly, many small enterprises compete to join the ecological circle dominated by large factories. As one of the players in the first echelon of smart home in China, Xiaomi Ecosphere has rapidly grown into a unicorn in the industry because of catching a ride with Xiaomi. However, with the help of green rice aqara, which is growing rapidly in the rice chain, it chooses to decouple the millet ecosystem. Can it live better in the future?
Rice chain blessing, green rice aqara gradually grows.
The growth of green rice aqara is inseparable from the blessing of Xiaomi, and it is precisely because of the blessing of rice chain that green rice aqara gradually occupies a place in the field of smart home.
It is understood that the predecessor of Green Rice aqara is Shenzhen Lutuo Technology, and its main business is not smart home, but an enterprise that focuses on the research and development and application of wireless building control systems for environmental energy collection.
In 2014, due to the shortage of funds, Xiaomi, Shunwei and world-renowned financial investment institutions invested in green rice to tide over the difficulties, and in that year, green rice was included in the Xiaomi ecological circle, that is, at that time, Green Extension was officially renamed as Green Rice, and it was also responsible for the research and development of smart home products of Xiaomi.
Green rice has also entered a process of rapid growth due to its back to the millet industry chain. Green rice aqara’s products cover almost all aspects of Mijia smart home.
In 2015, Green Rice also released the first Xiaomi smart home package product. As an enterprise of Xiaomi ecological chain, aqara products are closely linked with Mijia smart brand, which not only makes Mijia smart products have a wider application range, but also promotes the development of Green Rice aqara.
According to the data, Green Rice aqara’s products and equipment have spread to more than 9,000 cities in 192 countries around the world, serving more than 2 million smart home users, but Xiaomi has contributed a lot.
With the help of Xiaomi ecological circle, green rice aqara has survived the most difficult period of the industry. With the progress of science and technology, the market scale of smart home industry is growing, and the industry is also in the stage of imminent outbreak.
In order to occupy the market share, Green Rice aqara has carried out a big reform, changing the sales model from distribution agent to offline channel joining, which has opened a new river of domestic smart home offline service provider system.
It is precisely because of the existence of aqara Home Experience Store that Green Rice Aqara has increased the interaction and immersive experience between consumers and products, and successfully integrated the 2C and 2B solutions of the Internet of Things. The effect of this reform is very obvious. The old users of the experience store have become the second largest customer acquisition channel for green rice Aqara, and the proportion of referral orders has gradually increased from 15% to 22.4%.
Later, with the help of Xiaomi Ecosphere, green rice aqara became more and more famous. With the help of Xiaomi’s huge ecological chain, Green Rice Aqara already has service providers and offline stores covering most cities nationwide, and its products have gradually increased to more than 30 categories and more than 500 SKUs with the penetration rate of Xiaomi products.
However, in order to gain a bigger stage and higher income, in recent years, green rice aqara has gradually decoupled from the millet ecosystem. Can this really make it better?
Inconsistent ideas, green rice aqara decoupling rice chain
In recent years, with the further expansion of the scale and the increasingly fierce competition in the domestic smart home industry, green rice aqara began to be not limited to the millet ecosystem. In 2021, green rice aqara joined the matter agreement, officially jumped out of the Xiaomi ecological circle, was in line with international standards, and served international smart home manufacturers such as Apple and Google.
As a new smart home protocol based on open source ecology, matter protocol breaks the separation between platforms and the differences in development paths, making smart home products compatible between different manufacturers and brands, which sounds like it is of great benefit to the smart home hardware vendors, but the most fatal flaw is that this protocol was initiated by foreign manufacturers, and there is still some uncertainty about whether it can be used in China in the future.
For the development of the enterprise, it is understandable to join this agreement, but the following practices of green rice aqara to actively decouple the millet ecosystem are incomprehensible.
Since 2020, many new products of Green Rice aqara have only supported mainstream platforms such as APPleHomekit, Green Rice App, AmazonAlexa and Google Assistant, but they have not supported Mijia at first. For example, the network management M2 has caused discussion on the Internet, and some people even questioned whether Green Rice aqara should give up the big tree of Xiaomi.
Why does aqara, a green rice that can be measured by Xiaomi, begin to gradually decouple rice circles? This has to start from the pricing concept, technical layer agreement and development space.
Judging from the pricing concept, the reason why Xiaomi can be popular all over the country in a short time is nothing more than excellent quality and affordable price. As a high-end smart home product owned by Green Rice, aqara focuses on the high-end market, which has a serious conflict with Xiaomi’s cost-effective play.
More importantly, Xiaomi also has related products that can be used in the smart home market, which virtually competes with green rice aqara.
As the leader of Xiaomi’s ecological circle, Xiaomi has strong bargaining power, and the profit of its industrial chain hardware business does not even exceed 5%, which makes Xiaomi’s competitiveness more obvious and makes green rice aqara, who is also in the smart home industry, very uncomfortable.
It is understood that at present, the price of millet switches is mostly between 59-69 yuan, while that of green rice aqara switches is between 89-600 yuan. This price difference makes green rice, which is the main high-end market, unbearable.
More importantly, Xiaomi switch and green rice aqara switch are all produced by enterprises in the industrial chain, and their quality is not significantly different.
In addition to the differences in pricing concepts, technical conflicts are also a major factor. Xiaomi, as an integrator of ecological circle, has designed many products. In order to lower the threshold of users, it adopts Bluetooth mesh protocol, while Green Rice, as a single producer of smart home, uses zigbee protocol.
In short, Mijia no longer produces zigbee products, and all products of Green Rice need to be adjusted and retested, which leads to the differences between Green Rice and Xiaomi.
However, as the helm of the ecological circle, Xiaomi’s move is understandable in order to better complete the threshold of the Internet of Everything. If the green rice is adjusted accordingly, the Xiaomi ecological circle will grow rapidly with the arrival of the Internet of Everything in the future.
Technical differences may have a corresponding impetus, but it is probably the current market space problem that directly makes green rice aqara start to decouple from rice circles.
Recently, due to all-encompassing, Xiaomi Ecosphere did not focus its resources on smart homes in a short period of time, which led to the rapid growth of green rice in the rice circle. At present, many Internet manufacturers and home appliance manufacturers in China are in their own smart home ecosystem. The torn ecosystem not only hinders the growth of smart home market, but also affects consumers’ sensory experience.
This makes it difficult for green rice aqara, which has joined the Xiaomi ecological circle, to integrate into other smart home circles in China. Not only that, with the increase of the penetration rate of foreign smart home markets, the time for foreign markets to increase their volume is earlier than domestic ones, which is also the reason for the active decoupling of green rice aqara.
However, can short-term gains really make green rice grow faster? I’m afraid not. As one of the best ecological circles in China, Xiaomi Ecosphere has extraordinary growth potential. Therefore, the active decoupling of green rice aqara may not make it better.
Jump out of the millet circle, can green rice aqara be better?
For the development of the enterprise, it is understandable that green rice aqara jumped out of the millet ecosystem. However, can aqara, a green rice out of Xiaomi’s comfort zone, really create a better world?
Look at the previous Xiaomi ecological chain first to know. In the past, many enterprises that grew rapidly with Xiaomi’s resources, investment, channels and other resources began to grow independently after their business gradually improved, and some even competed directly with Xiaomi.
Green rice is not a case. Before that, there were four Xiaomi eco-chain enterprises, including Huami, Yunmi, Roborock and No.9, which were gradually decoupled from the deep binding of Xiaomi. At present, the effect of these enterprises to millet is average.
Green rice aqara joined the matter agreement this time. Although this agreement can be supported by mainstream smart home platforms such as AppleHomekit, AmazonAlexa and Google Assistant, it is uncertain whether this agreement can become the domestic mainstream under the background of domestic substitution.
More importantly, domestic smart homes have become more and more competitive after precipitation. Without Xiaomi’s blessing in the future, it will be more difficult for green rice aqara to compete with big factories.
tag
As one of the players in the first echelon of smart home in China, Xiaomi Ecosphere has rapidly grown into a unicorn in the industry because of catching a ride with Xiaomi. However, with the help of green rice aqara, which is growing rapidly in the rice chain, it is too short-sighted to choose to actively decouple the millet ecosystem.
Moreover, in the face of different enterprises have established their own ecological circles, it is difficult to be compatible between various hardware devices joining different ecological circles. Green rice aqara joined the matter agreement this time. Although this agreement can be supported by mainstream smart home platforms such as AppleHomekit, AmazonAlexa and Google Assistant, it is uncertain whether this agreement can become the domestic mainstream under the background of domestic substitution and big data security.
At the same time, domestic smart homes have become more and more competitive after precipitation. Without Xiaomi’s blessing in the future, the competition between green rice aqara and domestic manufacturers will be more difficult.
