Economic Observer Reporter Li Huaqing Midea Group (000333.SZ) is increasingly demonstrating its ambitions in the Internet of Things (IoT) field.
Midea Group is accelerating its exploration in the IoT sector. According to sources from Midea’s management, there is a new saying within the company: “In the Internet era, look to Alibaba; in the IoT era, look to Midea,” because Midea possesses a wealth of IoT scenarios, devices, and users. As a major home appliance giant, Midea’s exploration of IoT naturally starts with smart homes.
On October 14, Midea IoT held the 2021 Midea Smart Conference in Foshan, showcasing its thoughts on the development trends of smart homes and its new layout in the smart home sector.
At the conference, Midea IoT launched the first distributed operating system in the smart home industry based on OpenHarmony 2.0—Midea IoT Operating System 1.0. It also released Midea IoT Platform 1.0, Midea AI Dialogue Development Platform 1.0, and Midea IoT Open Platform 1.0. Additionally, it introduced a grading standard for smart appliances, categorizing the intelligence level of home appliances into four levels. Midea IoT’s ecological partners, including Huawei and the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, also made appearances at the conference.
The Smart Home Boom
According to Jiang Xu, Vice President and CTO of Midea Group IoT, the prospects for smart homes should be broader than those for IoT applications such as autonomous driving and smart mobility, as people spend significantly more time at home than on the go.
In fact, the concept of smart homes has been highly promoted in the home appliance industry, but so far, the effectiveness of smart homes among consumers still needs improvement. The slow adoption of smart homes may be due to various factors, and manufacturers are actively working to eliminate barriers to implementation.
To address the issue of consumers struggling to discern the intelligence level of smart appliances, Midea IoT announced a grading standard for smart appliances at the smart conference. There are four levels: Level 0 represents no intelligence, relying mainly on manual operation; Level 1 represents basic intelligence, achieving smart control of individual products; Level 2 represents auxiliary intelligence, enabling multi-product interaction; Level 3 represents autonomous intelligence, allowing natural interaction between people and products, with products proactively serving users; and Level 4 represents complete intelligence, providing comprehensive smart services. Jiang Xu revealed that this grading standard for smart appliances has been submitted to the International Organization for Standardization, which has accepted it.
In a media interview after the conference, Jiang Xu explained that within Midea Group, the aforementioned grading standard for smart appliances has already been implemented. Most of Midea’s appliance products are at Level 1, with some reaching Levels 2 and 3. When planning new products internally, there is a conscious effort to consider what level of intelligence the new products should achieve. The public release of this grading standard aims to foster early consensus on smart appliance grading within the industry.
Jiang Xu believes that the smart home industry has yet to provide consumers with enough impressive applications. At the smart conference, Midea IoT launched four major IoT platforms, including Midea IoT Operating System 1.0, Midea IoT Platform 1.0, Midea AI Dialogue Development Platform 1.0, and Midea IoT Open Platform 1.0, aiming to create a relatively open IoT system from the operating system layer, physical connection layer, platform layer, and application layer.
For example, Jiang Xu mentioned that in the past, developing a dialogue robot at Midea required programmers to spend about a month, but with the help of the Midea AI Dialogue Development Platform, this work can now be completed in one day using a drag-and-drop approach, significantly improving work efficiency.
The Midea IoT Operating System 1.0 is a distributed operating system developed based on OpenHarmony 2.0. As long as smart devices use the Harmony operating system, they can effectively connect even if they come from different brands.
At the smart conference, Jiang Xu introduced the concept of “Meta Home.” He believes that home appliances can fully serve as the entry point for the IoT. In the IoT era, home appliances can act like computers in the PC era, just as smartphones served as computers in the mobile internet era.
The Power of Ecosystems
Midea Group’s executives are well aware that achieving smart homes and IoT cannot be accomplished solely by Midea; it requires the power of ecosystems.
In a media interview after the conference, Zhang Xiaoyi, Vice President and CIO of Midea Group, introduced Midea IoT’s ecological partners, which mainly include smartphone manufacturers, internet content providers, internet companies, and home furnishing companies. Among smartphone manufacturers, Huawei, OPPO, Vivo, and Apple are already partners, primarily for entry-level cooperation. In terms of internet content providers, there are companies like iQIYI and Tencent Music providing entertainment content, as well as those offering children’s education and recipe services, such as “Xia Chufang.”
Zhang Xiaoyi also stated that in the smart home field, Midea does not reject cooperation with other appliance companies: “For peers, we hope to collaborate as long as it serves users. For example, if users can connect appliances from competitors with our appliances, that is a good thing.”
According to the Economic Observer, Midea IoT’s website shows that Skyworth and Hisense are already ecological partners of Midea IoT.
Zhang Xiaoyi emphasized that Midea IoT’s cooperation with Huawei is quite deep. In addition to entry-level cooperation, collaboration on operating systems is also crucial. Midea Group is one of the first manufacturers to cooperate with Huawei on the Harmony operating system.
Zhang Xiaoyi revealed that this year, the shipment of Midea smart appliances equipped with the Harmony operating system has exceeded several million units. In the future, cooperation with Huawei in the IoT field will deepen, not only reflected in increased product shipments but also in the deepening of application scenarios and enhancement of consumer experiences. For instance, Huawei has accumulated a lot of health information from users through wearables, while Midea has gathered information on users’ dietary habits. These data have certain correlations, and if integrated, Midea could recommend recipes based on users’ exercise data, while Huawei wearables could suggest exercise methods based on users’ dietary data.
Zhang Xiaoyi emphasized Midea IoT’s open attitude, citing that Midea is also developing smart speakers. For many users, smart speakers serve as a control entry point for smart appliances. Midea has never required users to control Midea appliances exclusively with Midea smart speakers; instead, it collaborates with voice devices like Tmall Genie and Baidu speakers, respecting user habits and leaving the choice of control entry to users.
Zhang Xiaoyi believes that this kind of ecological cooperation will not completely erase Midea’s inherent value. For example, Midea’s app related to smart homes, “Midea Home,” simplifies functions like network configuration, switch control, and temperature adjustment, which can be handled by cooperative smart speakers. However, more complex functions and deeper user experiences, such as detecting air conditioner faults and air quality, need to return to “Midea Home.”
Zhang Xiaoyi introduced that as Midea IoT develops, the number of ecological partners will increase. In the future, if there are investment targets strongly related to IoT, Midea Group will also consider investing in them.
Currently, Midea is continuously increasing its ecological partners in response to the new market demands for smart appliances. The Economic Observer learned from the smart conference that to respond to the national goals of “carbon peak and carbon neutrality,” Midea is about to launch home appliance products in collaboration with the China Electronics Research Institute.
“Our first strategy for smart homes is comprehensive digitalization and intelligence, transforming all products into smart versions. The second strategy is to prioritize user experience, focusing closely on users. The third strategy is to integrate technology with home scenarios, where research on scenarios and user needs is crucial, followed by determining how to match technology with scenarios and user needs. We mainly advance through these three strategies. Whether these strategies are entirely correct, we do not know, but we believe that the smart home that users can truly feel is the real smart home,” Zhang Xiaoyi stated in a media interview.