In 2014, a movie called "Dear" was released. This movie starring Huang Wei tells the story of a couple who have gone through all the hardships to find their son who was abducted.
The most touching scene in the film appeared in the scene where Huang Wei found the child at the police station. In the face of a man he is not familiar with, the fearful boy shouted to the police with a cry to "catch them up." As soon as the lens turned, the sorrowful scorpion screamed helplessly on the stairs of the police station.
Perhaps the original intention of the film makers is to raise the society's emphasis on the topic of abduction, but it has inadvertently awakened the development of children's smart watches in China.
Since 2014, the domestic shipments of children's smart watches have increased in a step-by-step manner. At the 9th Mobile Internet Investment Forum of Zero2IPO Group held in September 2015, Li Zhihua, CEO of the wearable hardware startup Magnet Technology, mentioned that in 2014, the total shipment of children's smart watches was only several hundred thousand. Taiwan; by 2015, the monthly shipments have reached this figure. At that time, he said that some people in the industry had predicted that the annual sales volume would reach 50 million units by 2020.
Such a huge market has attracted countless companies to participate in it. According to analysis data, in 2015, there were more than 600 children's smart watch manufacturers in China; China Sankei Shimbun reported that more than 300 companies in the Pearl River Delta region have joined the war.
A company from Shenzhen has also become a member of the children's smart watch army in this wave. In 2014, Shenzhen Graceful Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Beautiful Innovationâ€) launched its children's smart watch brand “Wei Xiaobaoâ€.
However, with the bursting of wearable foam, the field of children's smart watches has also shown a decline before reaching the peak. By the beginning of 2016, the children's smart watch market began to shuffle, the overall shipment growth rate slowed down, and numerous brands disappeared into the consumer's field of vision. At present, there are only a few brands left in the market, including many small talents that are familiar to users, and Wei Xiaobao has been able to avoid this storm.
As one of the earliest entrants in this industry, Wei Xiaobao is one of the witnesses of the children's smart watch from the unknown to the rapid rise, and then reinvented the entire process.
â–ŒFrom mobile phone to watch
"Entering the children's smart watch industry is a very accidental thing for us," Tang Fan, vice president of China Science and Technology and president of China, told the interface journalist.
Beautiful innovation was founded in 2006. At the beginning of its establishment, they were also called “beautiful communicationâ€. At that time, there were very few companies that could pan for gold in the Middle East, Europe and the United States, but beautiful and innovative is one of them. At the time, its main position was the mobile phone ODM design manufacturer, which received orders from overseas operators such as Vodafone and Orange. A report by the Southern Metropolis Daily on the company in 2012 mentioned that they achieved sales of 5 million units in 2011 and revenues of $100 million.
If this has been going on, the beautiful innovation may become another domestic mobile phone brand. But a trip to Venice changed the company's development track.
Venice is a world-famous water city. In the local area, citizens often rely on gondola boats for their daily travel. However, these boats are often difficult to control when parked, and there are often cases where ships are floating.
“At that time, the local police in Venice wanted to solve this problem. Our local team made a GPS tracker for them to be placed on the ship for positioning,†recalls Tang.
The birth of this new business of “new business†made the beautiful and innovative management team realize the concept of transformation for the first time. They believe that back-end services are crucial no matter what type of hardware. Therefore, based on the technology of the GPS tracker, Graceful Innovation has launched a location-based cloud platform called Wherecom.
From the current point of view, Wherecom's original features are still slightly simple. The interaction process is completed by sending a short message, and the user obtains the location coordinates in the short message and then determines the location through the computer. But at that time, this feature has been able to meet everyday needs.
At the earliest, Wherecom was a B-side service solution. Its application scenarios include positioning vehicles or wildlife. In 2013, an opportunity to work with 360 allowed Graceful Innovation to begin applying this solution to the C-end.
"At that time, 360 wanted to make a children's watch, which was the later 360 child guards. We found us to cooperate. We did ODM, they provided software backstage, and then launched the first generation of child guards," Tang Fan said.
However, in the subsequent cooperation, the two companies began to disagree on the concept, mainly reflected in the core functions of the product. As a company that is a security software company, 360 wants to highlight the security of its products, so they hope to continue the central position of the positioning function in the product; while the beautiful innovation that has been doing communication before, that is, since the positioning of the product is children, then solve Communication between people is more important than positioning. Communication functions should be added to the product.
In the absence of consensus, the two sides parted ways. In the following year, the beautiful and innovative brand launched the Wei Xiaobao brand to produce children's watches.
When talking about the cooperation and the differences between the two sides, Tang Fan is still somewhat uneven. He told the interface journalists that tens of millions of children in the country are not living under the same roof as their parents, which makes the communication problem just a necessity.
As for positioning, he thinks it is not that important. “We have done research, and the frequency of use of the positioning function is greatly reduced after three months of user purchase,†he said. “And the technology is not likely to make the positioning accurate to one or two meters.â€
In its own products, Graceful Innovation has added the Wherecom-based positioning function, which can be positioned by GPS, LBS, Wi-Fi technology; in addition, communication functions can be saved in the product. Tang Fan said that Wei Xiaobao made the earliest positioning of the "Children's Phone Watch" on the market.
▌ tough market development
In September 2014, Apple officially released the smart watch Apple Watch. The addition of giants has added a firewood to the development of wearable devices.
Even so, at the time, children's smart watches were still an advanced product. Not many people realize their value. At the beginning of the start, Wei Xiaobao felt the chill of the market.
“Children’s watches belong to an innovative product at that time, and their core lies in promotion.†Tang Fan said that how to let consumers and dealers accept children’s smart watches has become their most troublesome problem.
Another reason why Wei Xiaobao is difficult to open up the market is the pricing of the products. The price of its first-generation product was 499 yuan, which was a lot higher than the price of the children's watch on the market at that time, which made customers more resistant.
Tang Fan described to the interface journalists the dilemma they encountered when they opened up the market. "We found dealers and introduced them to our products; but they asked us, Disney's cartoon watches also sold one or two hundred pieces, why are our products so expensive," heard these words, Tang Fan dumb Words.
“The guidance of the channel is a very difficult process,†he said.
However, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, "Dear" and the simultaneous "Lonely Lost" two films on the subject of abduction have also promoted the development of the children's smart watch industry. For a time, out of concern for children and fear, the desire to buy related products on the market has become unprecedentedly strong.
The dealers who questioned Wei Xiaobao’s “why are more expensive than Disney†have also changed their hesitation. Previously, in order to open the market, Wei Xiaobao's staff even wanted to let the dealers only enter one or two watches and put water on the counter. With the advent of the boom, a small number of products were swept away.
After that, the dealers once again found Wei Xiaobao asking for delivery, but this time they wanted more than one or two, but dozens or even hundreds of children's smart watches.
In addition to the domestic market, Wei Xiaobao began to explore overseas markets with his past advantages. Overseas, their products, KidFit, are sold in more than 20 countries and regions; the Wherecom platform is also deployed in Europe, America, Australia and Southeast Asia.
In the fast-growing market, Wei Xiaobao began to taste the sweetness. Tang Fan said that Wei Xiaobao now has an annual sales growth rate of 100%, and there are millions of watches on the world where the Wherecom system is mounted.
▌ from prosperity to shuffle
The market education for children's smart watches was completed in two unexpected ways in two films.
In 2015, in addition to Wei Xiaobao, Sogou, LeTV, Huawei and other major manufacturers have entered the industry, hoping to get a piece of it. The entry of these companies has driven the industry into the growth phase from the burgeoning stage.
However, this prosperity has not only attracted large manufacturers, but the industry's profitable situation has also attracted many small manufacturers. Most of these small manufacturers are concentrated in Shenzhen Huaqiang North and other regions. Most of the products they produce do not have brands, and they are called “white cardsâ€.
Tang Fan recalled that at the time, most of the white-brand manufacturers were mainly mobile phone manufacturers. “The manufacturers who make cottages are already weak in competitiveness. Some companies are transforming to this new growth point in order to go to capacity.â€
This has led to a rapid increase in sales data in the market. He estimated that in 2015, the number of children's smart watches shipped reached 20 million, but perhaps two-thirds of them are white goods.
In fact, consumers' awareness of children's smart watches has indeed improved. According to data from market research firm Sino International, in 2015, the brand recognition of children's watches in the consumer group reached 44.5%; in 2013, this figure was only 10%.
But at the same time, the industry's estimate of market size has shifted from too low to too high. Tang Fan told reporters that for children's watches, the target customer group is children between the ages of 4 and 12; and the total population of this part is 100 million in China, and the frequency of product updates is not as strong as that of mobile phones.
The bubble between sales data and production data began to appear in the absence of major changes in the actual product market.
In addition, a large proportion of white-brand products means that most products on the market do not have quality guarantees. In general, when producing mobile phones, these manufacturers only need to assemble the parts and ship them.
But the logic for producing wearable devices is not the same as for mobile phones.
"In addition to assembling, wearable devices have also joined the connection, which requires manufacturers to add servers, cloud and other software to the device and carry out subsequent management. White-brand manufacturers do not have the technology behind them, so the quality can not be achieved. Product. The essence of this industry is that there is a threshold, it is easy to make a prototype, but it is very difficult to make mature products," Tang Fan said.
In order to solve the above problems, some white-label manufacturers choose to find an outsourcing service provider to create a simple background. The consequence of this is the disclosure of child-related information. In April this year, some news said that it would cost more than 200,000 1-5-year-old infants and toddlers in Jinan for only 32,000 yuan. The CCTV "Focus Interview" column also reported that some children's smart watches have potential safety hazards. The problem of being attacked by hackers.
To this end, People’s Daily published a statement saying that “children’s leaks must be checked in the endâ€.
The emergence of such events has made the white card children's watch a joke. "It was originally to protect children's safety, but now they can't keep them safe," Tang Fan was very helpless.
Under the influence of oversupply and quality, the children's smart watch industry began to shuffle in 2016. Tang Fan said that many white cards on the market have disappeared; he estimates that a more intense reshuffle will come next year.
The reshuffle of the industry not only eliminated the white-label manufacturers, but also made the big manufacturers who survived feel the pressure. The consensus in the market today is that the company can only sustain it if it continues to lay a solid foundation for technology.
Beyond that, finding a correct development direction is also an important issue that Wei Xiaobao needs to solve in the moment. Tang Fan told the interface journalist that there are several evolutionary clues on the product of children's smart watches, namely network standard, technical process, screen display and intelligence. There are many possibilities, but a company must find a breakthrough.
For Wei Xiaobao, video features may be the focus of their future. In May of this year, they released a watch with a video call function "Wei Xiaobao doki". Tang Fan said that Doki was the first video call watch on the market at the time, and it was also a continuation of their traditional communication.
Before the official launch, Tang Fan said that Wei Xiaobao had spent a year and a half debugging the product. He hopes that doki will meet the parents' needs for contact with children as much as possible.
Some manufacturers choose to add more casual entertainment content to their watches from the perspective of children. However, Tang Fan believes that this is not desirable. "This is still used as a mobile phone to think about making watches, and constantly doing additions, but is this really good for children's growth?" he said.
Although shuffling has begun, there are still hundreds of smart watch manufacturers on the market. At the moment, the standard has not yet been established for this industry, and the market is still full of various products. Therefore, in marketing, Wei Xiaobao also hopes to take into account the two channels of online and offline, so that consumers can make decisions after experiencing the product.
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