"XIAOMI is not a simple hardware company, but an innovative Internet company," Lei Jun said in an open letter from the chairman of XIAOMI's prospectus. Specifically, XIAOMI is an Internet company with mobile phones, smart hardware and IoT platform as the core. "

For XIAOMI, mobile phone business is related to the survival of enterprises, smart hardware and Internet of things platform represent how far the future can go; for modern people, mobile phones are an inseparable part of life, and the Internet of things represents the yearning future. So, what is the future of XIAOMI's "bet"-the world of the Internet of things? What advantages does XIAOMI have on this track that belongs to development?

• The World of the Internet of things

In 1999, Professor Ashton of MIT Auto-ID Center first put forward the concept of "Internet of things" when studying RFID.

In 2005, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) issued "ITU Internet report 2005: Internet of things" at the World Summit on the Information Society held by Tunis, which expanded the coverage of the Internet of things.

In 2016, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the fascicle of the Information and Communications Industry Development Plan of the Internet of things in the 13th five-year Plan. "the Internet of things is a highly integrated and comprehensive application of a new generation of information technology," the report said. it is of great significance to the new round of industrial change and the green, intelligent and sustainable development of economy and society.

The change of the development scale of the Internet of things industry in China from 2014 to 2022 (100 million yuan)Data source: forward-looking Industrial Research Institute

In 2017, the scale of the domestic Internet of things industry basically exceeded 930 billion yuan, an increase of 9.31% over the same period last year. According to the statistics of the "Analysis report on Market Segmentation and Investment opportunities of the Internet of things in China" released by the prospective Industrial Research Institute.The market size will exceed 2 trillion yuan by 2018 and close to 7.2376 trillion yuan by 2022.The development of the Internet of things has unlimited space.

Wikipedia said, "the Internet of things (English: Internet of Things, abbreviated IoT) is the Internet, traditional telecommunications networks and other information carriers, so that all ordinary objects can perform independent functions to achieve interconnection of the network." "

When it comes to life, the Internet of things may be a small "App" in your mobile phone. We use it to remotely control water heaters, refrigerators, air conditioners and other household appliances at home. In a practical sense, smart home is only an application embodiment of the Internet of things, tracing back to the source, the architecture of the Internet of things is not only here.

Diagram of the industrial chain of the Internet of things

From left to right,The architecture of the Internet of things is divided into four layers: perception layer, network layer, platform layer and application layer.According to these four levels, the industrial chain of the Internet of things can be roughly divided into eight links: chip providers, sensor suppliers, wireless module (including antenna) manufacturers, network operators (including SIM card vendors), platform service providers, system and software developers, intelligent hardware manufacturers, system integration and application service providers.

• XIAOMI's layout of the Internet of things

Without the guidance and help of BABA and Tencent in resources, channels, and traffic, compared with Meizu, Hammer and Yijia, which started with hardware, XIAOMI has completed an industrial chain of intelligent hardware and daily consumables through the layout of the ecological chain.

People in the industry once commented, "if the development of Chinese Internet companies is divided into three stages, then the third stage marks the arrival of the era of the Internet of things represented by XIAOMI." "

Source: prospectus

After all, for XIAOMI, who started out as a hardware product,IoT and consumer products account for 20.5% of the group's total revenue, second only to the mobile phone business, and play a very important role.Even though XIAOMI is more focused on the middle and lower reaches of the industry chain"Consumer Internet of things"However, it can still be seen in the whole industry chain of the Internet of things.

1) upstream: a pleasant cooperation of mutual benefit

Looking back at the industrial chain map of the Internet of things, in the upstream region with the most serious industry barriers (perception layer), XIAOMI did not enter directly, but the good cooperative relationship built with his competitors determines XIAOMI's development space in this industry. Take XIAOMI's core product mobile phone as an example, 15 core suppliers "escort", most of XIAOMI's suppliers benefited from cooperation in 2017.

Most of XIAOMI's core suppliers are listed enterprises, and listed enterprises can provide good protection for product quality, while XIAOMI has a large demand, which allows suppliers to ensure reasonable profits on a large scale while boosting revenue, thus forming a benign cooperative relationship between XIAOMI and listed enterprises.

At the same time, through these cooperation, XIAOMI can provide supply chain and product design help to other enterprises downstream of the Internet of things industry and XIAOMI ecological chain layout, achieve synergy between enterprises and improve the efficiency of the industrial chain.

In addition, the network layer of the Internet of things industry chain is mainly built by the three major domestic operators, basic operators in the face of the huge cake of the mobile Internet, often choose to cooperate with Internet companies, XIAOMI is also one of them. XIAOMI has separately reached cooperation with China Telecom Corporation and China Unicom to launch "XIAOMI Mobile phone Card".

2) Middle reaches: independent development and all-round development

According to the forecast of China's industry information, the number of global Internet of things connections is close to 20 billion in 2022. The Internet of things will enter a blowout development period.

As of November 2017, XIAOMI IoT platform has more than 85 million connected devices, IoT platform has an average of more than 10 million daily active users, and has more than 400 global partners, including China Mobile Limited, Microsoft Corp, Siemens and Philips.

XIAOMI held the 2017MIDC XIAOMI IoT developer Conference in Beijing on November 28, 2017, at which Lei Jun announced that "XIAOMI will fully open the IoT platform and launch the IoT developer program." XIAOMI IoT developer platform is XIAOMI's open platform for the Internet of things, providing software and hardware services such as networking module, cloud platform, App remote control, data cloud storage, OTA, user account and so on.

XIAOMI wrote in the prospectus, "as of March 31, 2018, the IoT developer platform has provided access to more than 580 developers. "thus it can be seen that XIAOMI has completely opened up the upstream and downstream fields in the platform layer in the field of the Internet of things, and has become a major force that can not be ignored in his peers.

3) downstream: broad layout of strategic investment

As of March 31, 2018, XIAOMI has established an ecosystem of more than 210 companies through investment and management, of which more than 90 companies focus on developing smart hardware and consumer products. More than 100m devices (excluding smartphones and laptops) are connected.

At present, there are four unicorns in the ecological chain invested by XIAOMI, namely Zhimi Technology, Nambo and Zimi Technology, which are valued at more than 1 billion US dollars, and Zepp Health, which is listed on Nasdaq in the United States on February 8, 2018.

XIAOMI is involved in the two categories of Internet of things intelligent terminals and system integration application services in the lower reaches of the Internet of things industry chain.

In the field of enterprise services, Shun Wei Technology, which is closely connected with XIAOMI, has invested in companies such as YiDiantao Network Technology Co., Ltd., which aims to provide small and medium-sized enterprises with deposit-free rental services for computer equipment, and is committed to solving the problem of network risk and fraud in industries such as tripartite payment.

Source: southwest Securities

On the intelligent terminal of the Internet of things, in addition to the enterprises shown above, XIAOMI Technology has also participated in the C round financing of Ding Zhan Intelligent door Magnetic, and the A round financing of eggplant Technology, a hardware R & D and manufacturing enterprise.

• XIAOMI's consumption Internet of things

The consumer IoT market refers to the sales of IoT devices and the provision of consumer-oriented IoT-driven services. Consumer-related IoT applications cover a wide range of applications, including information and entertainment, health care, smart home, home security and safety.Among them, the IoT platform and consumer goods located in the middle and lower reaches of the Internet of things industry constitute XIAOMI's consumer Internet of things.

According to iResearch, the number of consumer IoT terminals increased from 3 billion in 2015 to 4.9 billion in 2017, with a compound annual growth rate of 27.7%. The number is expected to reach 15.3 billion in 2022, with a compound annual growth rate of 25.4 per cent from 2017 to 2022. From the perspective of the development trend of the industry, the compound annual growth rate continues to maintain at a high level, indicating that the consumer-grade Internet of things industry has become a trend of the times and has a considerable prospect.

As of December 31, 2017, it is calculated on the basis of the number of connected devices.XIAOMI is the world's leading IoT platform, with a market share of 1.7% in the same year.In the ecological chain layout, XIAOMI with cost-effective hardware products and widely related smart home first step, let the market report with an optimistic attitude.

In the prospectus, XIAOMI described his intelligent speaker product, "Xiao Ai Voice Assistant": as of March 31, 2018, Xiao Ai can control.118 modelsOur products include XIAOMI box, Mijia floor sweeping robot, Mijia IH rice cooker, XIAOMI air purifier, Zhimi floor fan and smart lamps.

Thus it can be seen that, different from the smart speakers of Tmall introduced by Taobao, "listen to the stereo" launched by Tencent, and "Xiaodu at home" by Baidu, Inc., XIAOMI is "fighting" with the bosses in the same field by virtue of the advantages of the Internet of things.

Perhaps XIAOMI's competitors are only the bigwigs of the Internet industry, but after the traditional industry Haier launched the U+ smart life platform, the competition in the field of the Internet of things is not easier than the Internet.

(editor / Zhang Huiyu)