Apple released the smart home platform HomeKit 4 years ago but the ecological layout of Apple HomeKit did not progress due to the high requirements for the hardware and chip manufacturers, and there were only over 100 smart home devices on its platform by early 2017.

In 2018, the situation has been changing. At CES ASIA Exhibition this year, the smart home exhibitors based on HomeKit technology were increased, including 29 enterprises participating through Founder Smart Home Smart Life Industry Alliance and covering over 50 kinds of intelligent devices.

Vigorous arrangement of Homekit by Apple has become the new opportunity for the domestic manufacturer

LIFX, the smart bulb manufacturers of Philips, Haier and Elgato and IKEA have promoted HomeKit together; the entrepreneurship-type air purifier manufacturers including Shenzhen local company OPSO and Airburg have joined, and even R&F Properties has also integrated Homekit device in the newly built houses.

Voice control of connection between HomeKit and Siri and remote control of iCloud in iOS system are equal to setting up the infrastructures for the smart home devices.

From the view of the trend, categories of the domestic smart home products based on HomeKit technology will become rich continuously in the future, which will certainly cause the impact to the domestic smart home market.

In order to accelerate the development of HomeKit, Apple has also taken two measures:

1)   Cooperating with the home developers to promote home intelligence; for example, Brookfield Residential, KB Home, Lennar Home and R&F Properties have integrated the HomeKit device in the newly built houses currently.

2)    Product manufacturers jointly using HomeKit technology led by Founder Home Smart Life have organized Smart Home Industry Alliance and have provided the consumers with the rich and comprehensive overall smart home solution by integrating the products of the domestic and foreign manufacturers passing the HomeKit audit.

Situation of domestic smart home:

Baidu announced the overall opening of the voice interaction platform Duer OS at AI Developer Conference in July 2017; Ali has had AI Labs intelligent voice assistant and developer platform AliGenie; Xiaomi Smart home arranged the intelligent hardware industry chain by investment and made control through MIJIA APP, and the traditional industries represented by Haier, Midea, Changhong, TCL and Gree have made the single intelligent products.

In the Chinese market, there have been many smart home products but all the brands have their own APPs, and the brands are “unconnected” and incompatible.

If Apple achieves a good balance between the experience of smart home products and the partners’ product price and applies to the market channels in the Chinese market and the national conditions of China, HomeKit will be likely to become a key platform for the current domestic smart home manufacturers to break the situation.

(Source: JJGLE.COM)