[Market Insight] The "swelling" of the domestic smart lock market

HC Security Network News on smart home detonated when the topic has been debated, however, as the entry-level smart home hardware products, smart locks quickly landing the next two years will be consistent with the wisdom of the family is optimistic about the industry. Among them, the fingerprint lock will bear the brunt, leading the smart lock market into a period of great explosion.

In recent years, smart locks are undoubtedly the most popular keywords. As the most intelligent hardware products with “Tiaojiao” capital, they are favored and sought after by the industry. Not only have the major giants and startups joined in, but many capitals are also competing to promote the rapid development of the domestic smart lock market.

The intelligentization of locks is the trend of the times

Under the stimulation of real estate leasing and fine decoration delivery policy support, mutual investment in various capitals, substantial improvement in consumer spending power and years of education in smart homes, smart locks will be an unstoppable replacement for mechanical locks. trend. From the perspective of time latitude, the domestic smart lock industry experienced the germination of 2015, and accelerated in 2016. In 2017, product technology maturity, market education, development environment and market scale were at a high-speed take-off stage. Undoubtedly, China's smart lock industry will usher in a period of rapid development.

China's smart locks have huge potential market. From the perspective of existing market capacity, the current penetration rate of smart locks in China is still 3%, far lower than that of developed countries in Korea and Europe, which means that 97% of households will consume in the future. The possibility of upgrading. From the pre-installation market, smart locks have gradually won the recognition of major real estate developers. With the advent of the era of fine decoration, the smart lock pre-installation market is very hot. According to the "2017-2022 China Fingerprint Lock Industry Analysis and Development Prospects Research Report", the annual national real estate decoration market has reached hundreds of billions of yuan, of which the national door lock has a market of tens of billions; the national renovation and second-hand real estate renovation needs The door locks are even more than 10 billion yuan. Moreover, according to the survey, the average real estate price of more than 4,500 yuan / square meter in 70 key cities across the country, all of which have reached the purchasing power of purchasing intelligent electronic locks. These factors mean that China's smart locks have gradually formed a real market demand.

In addition to the blue ocean market, the artificial intelligence, wireless communication and cloud platform technology make the smart locks have the intelligent advantages of traditional mechanical locks, subverting people's thinking about traditional unlocking, and solving the problems such as the usual key when going downstairs. At the place where you can put and forget the key, you must face many problems such as locked doors, thieves and shackles threatening property and personal safety. A safer and more convenient smart lock has opened the ideal wings for people's intelligent life. It can be said that the maturity of smart lock technology will greatly stimulate people's desire to purchase smart locks, and then drive the demand of the ordinary family for the smart lock market.

The B end first landed the C end into a "black horse"

As we all know, consumers' awareness of smart locks is not high, which is an important factor leading to ultra-low penetration rate of smart locks in China. According to the 2017 China Smart Lock Application and Development White Paper, 20.1% of domestic consumers have not heard of smart locks. In addition, the lack of confidence in domestic brands, the high price of foreign brands, but also caused most consumers to abandon the fingerprint lock to choose the traditional mechanical lock. Relatively speaking, in order to maximize the flow of passengers and value, the demand for smart door locks in the hotel and the rapidly emerging branded apartment market is more intense and urgent. According to the author's understanding, since 2015, many brand apartments and hotels have begun to adopt smart locks, which has become the main application scenario of smart locks. Therefore, the early smart lock market must be driven first through the B-end.

It is understood that many domestic smart lock companies have B-end as an important sales channel. Manufacturers such as Haier, Midea and ASSA ABLOY are choosing to cooperate with real estate developers to install their own smart locks or complete smart home systems. Newly developed real estate. According to authoritative data, the first line of smart locks has exceeded 10% of the apartment market, and it is expected that the apartment market will reach 8 million by 2020. In the office sector, the number of smart locks in the office sector reached 150,000 in 2017.

Compared with the B-end market, the C-side smart lock market of 450 million households has a larger capacity and is more likely to form a scale effect. In 2016, China's smart lock retail market officially broke out, which in turn led to the rapid development of China's smart lock market. According to the data disclosed in the 2017 China Smart Lock Application and Development White Paper, the sales growth trend of smart lock online is obviously better than offline retail. From September 2016 to August 2017, the number of payment for Tmall smart lock is higher. The previous cycle surged by 193.97%. It can be seen that the online retail channel will become a “dark horse”.

With the maturity of the smart lock consumer market, the development speed of smart locks in the ordinary family market cannot be underestimated, and the ordinary family market will be the main battlefield for the future development of smart locks. In the future, China's smart lock market will focus on offline experience and services, online purchase of O2O retail, engineering market share will be further reduced, and the market share of door locks will increase.

Fingerprint lock will become the opening "pioneer"

2017 is a year of artificial intelligence technology explosion. Artificial intelligence realizes the seamless connection and communication between people, machines and systems, so that the door lock has basic judgment and learning ability, thus realizing the intelligent use of door locks. . Artificial intelligence is represented by biometric technology, which includes fingerprint recognition, face recognition, finger vein recognition, pupil recognition and other biological recognition methods. At present, fingerprint recognition technology accounts for more than 97% of the entire market. According to the development trend of domestic smart locks, fingerprint locks have the advantage of landing in the ordinary household market, and are more favored by technology manufacturers.

The smartphone market has boosted the technology maturity and cost reduction of the entire biometric industry. For example, the fingerprint technology of iphone bio-recognition assists the mature technology of smart lock products and the user experience of products. It can be said that the fingerprint recognition living technology is very mature, and it is difficult to forge legal user identity by using silicone fingerprint, which is more economical, safe and reliable. Moreover, the price of fingerprint locks has become more reasonable and close to the people. At present, the detection of living body, the same birth detection, the detection distance of 3D face and the deep learning technology of face detection are not mature in face recognition technology, and there are also large defects in hardware power consumption. Many domestic enterprises launch face. The identification lock is more for the heat, from the product point of view, it has a lot of room for improvement for the end user, safety and convenience. Therefore, the face recognition lock is more suitable for public areas such as active community building intercom, community pedestrian gates.

In addition, in the long run, the future development of iris locks is very promising. Iris recognition is a non-contact biometric technology that eliminates the need for hand recognition. Moreover, the iris has unique characteristics compared to current faces and fingerprints. Iris recognition technology is more accurate and safer. For the smart lock product, regardless of which biometric technology is used, the "technical cost", "algorithm maturity" and "product power consumption" issues need to be considered. Comprehensive consideration, fingerprint lock technology is the most mature, will fall to the ordinary family, and occupy the majority of the market in the next two to three years, while the iris represents the future trend, but still need to solve the power consumption and user experience.

At the same time, cloud locks are also a relatively hot development direction. However, most smart locks are still individual individuals. The virtual lock function of virtual networking is not powerful. For ordinary consumption, the lock function of cloud locks is just a icing on the cake. Therefore, in a short period of time, cloud locks with networking functions will be relatively slow in the field of ordinary household consumption, and currently rely mainly on the B-end market. However, with the penetration of the Internet of Things in the smart home field, smart locks and smart home systems are connected, which is a broader application scenario for smart locks in the future.

Editor in charge: Zhong Juanjuan