The rapid development of Internet of Things, AI and other new technologies has promoted the smart door lock industry to undergo technological changes from key unlocking to password unlocking to fingerprint recognition, face recognition and biometrics. At the same time, the entry of more players has also accelerated the technological innovation and experience upgrade of the industry, and promoted the development of smart door locks in a safer, more convenient and smarter direction.
No.01 new products of intelligent door locks are repeated.
On April 17th, Deschman, a domestic smart door lock head enterprise, released four breakthrough technologies, namely iris recognition, WeChat audio and video call, AI voice registration and SHOTAX sentry cat eye system, and at the same time introduced AI iris smart lock K10, floating smart lock K77, cat eye big screen smart lock Q5MPro, cat eye back screen smart lock Q3MPro and other products equipped with related technologies.
Among them, iris recognition technology is particularly concerned by the industry. It is understood that the traditional iris recognition technology has always had two major problems: first, the traditional iris recognition technology has a narrow effective recognition distance range and is inconvenient to use; Second, the recognition height is narrow, and the human eye needs to cooperate with the camera orientation. These technical difficulties lead to the traditional iris recognition is far from meeting the consumer demand.
Deschman said that through the innovation of optical lens technology, Deschman broke through the effective recognition distance limit of iris recognition technology and expanded the effective recognition range by four times. In addition, Deschman innovated the iris self-tracking recognition system, which can quickly and effectively lock the height position, realize the automatic searching of the lens, and then lock and identify the iris through autofocus technology.
Coincidentally, on the same day, Huawei also brought a brand-new upgraded smart door lock product, and launched functions such as message memo, safety reminder for elderly people living alone and children’s home reminder.
Like Deschman, in addition to ease of use, security has become the focus of Huawei’s smart door locks.
Huawei said that Huawei’s smart door locks have been protected from both hardware and software. In terms of hardware, Huawei’s smart door lock adopts C-class lock core, and uses technical protection measures such as anti-cat-eye unlocking and anti-violent destruction, which can effectively prevent criminals from infringing on family safety; In terms of software, Huawei smart door locks are equipped with functions such as security alarm and AI monitoring and snapshot. When someone is wandering outside the door, it can find abnormal situations in time and deal with them accordingly.
No.02 market penetration rate continues to expand.
According to the Summary Report on Online Market of Home Smart Door Locks in China in 2022 released by AVC, the total sales volume of home smart door locks in China in 2022 was 18.05 million sets, of which the online market accounted for about 32%, with a scale of 5.378 million sets, up by 17.4% year-on-year. Aoweiyun. com predicts that the omni-channel sales of home smart door locks in China will reach 19.6 million sets in 2023, up 8.6% year-on-year, of which the online market is expected to sell 6.17 million sets, up 14.7% year-on-year.
Jost Sullivan, a well-known consulting firm, released the "Research Report on Smart Home and Smart Door Lock Industry in China in 2022" in April this year, which holds that the smart door lock market in China is in an explosive growth stage, and the overall market size is expected to exceed 40 billion yuan in the next five years.
Faced with such a huge market growth space, many brands rushed to join this track. Specifically, at present, the players of smart door lock track can be roughly divided into three camps: traditional lock brands represented by Deschman, Internet technology companies such as Huawei, and home appliance giants such as Haier.
The data shows that in 2022, there were more than 300 smart door lock brands in the domestic market, and nearly 1,800 styles were on sale. With the maturity of smart door lock technology and clearer industrial chain, the market is showing a trend of contention.
No.03 technology and ecology become the focus of competition.
Although the smart door lock industry has achieved explosive growth, Aowei Cloud analysts believe that compared with the penetration rate of 60% in Europe and America and 70% in Japan and South Korea, the market penetration rate of smart door locks in China is still low. With the continuous popularization of the industry and the increasing acceptance of smart door locks by consumers, the industry is changing to "rigid demand", and new technologies have become the focus of competition among brands.
The relevant person in charge of Deschman said that as a professional smart door lock brand, Deschman has been paying attention to the real pain points of users and making technological innovations. For example, in addition to the iris smart lock, Deschman is the first smart lock enterprise in the industry to access the audio and video functions of WeChat, making smart lock calls as convenient as WeChat video calls. Up to now, Deschman has 200+ patents and software copyrights and 2 million+own/existing production capacity and supply chain.
In addition, in the industry’s view, Huawei brand represents technology and quality, and has a high degree of recognition, which is Huawei’s biggest advantage in entering the smart door lock industry. In addition, the core of the smart door lock is not the hardware lock body, but the electronic and intelligent parts, focusing on the power consumption design and network connection ability, as well as biometric identification and visual imaging such as face recognition, fingerprint recognition and cat’s eye capture.
Not only that, the sales channel of traditional smart door locks is often the home improvement building materials channel, but Huawei has extremely strong channel capabilities. More importantly, the field of smart door locks has not yet formed an absolute oligopoly competition pattern, and ecology will be the focus of layout in recent years.
Market participants believe that the smart door lock industry in China has gone through an extensive growth stage and is moving towards specialization and quality. Both the market and consumers will need more valuable products and better comprehensive service experience. Therefore, the smart door lock market is bound to be a comprehensive competition about technology, channels and marketing.