Honeywell Development Strategy

Over the years, Honeywell has been better known as a century-old industrial enterprise, and its scientific and technological achievements in the B2B and commercial fields have been outstanding. However, in the past two years, Honeywell has emerged in the two-net industry. The consumer-grade Air Touch series of air purifiers have become the veritable king of sales, which seems "unintentional". So, how did Honeywell successfully cross-border to create an explosive product? What is the story behind this?

Optimistic about China's smart home market

Honeywell was originally an industrial manufacturing company focused on hardware production, with many industrial fields of black technology. With the rise of technology applications in the consumer sector, Honeywell has become increasingly aware that technology should be people-oriented and used by people. The technologies and products applied in the civilian field will bring Honeywell another broad market space in the future.

Honeywell is optimistic about China's smart home market. As of the end of 2015, the annual output value of the smart home industry has reached 124 billion yuan, with broad prospects. After a 10-year industrial introduction period, the smart home market has shown a significant growth momentum, and the industry has entered a period of development. After completing the market research, Honeywell preliminarily judged that in the next five to ten years, China’s smart home industry should develop extremely fast. As residential homes have become the focus of competition among various industries, smart homes, as a platform for undertaking, will also become The first goal that Fang forces competed for.

However, the current smart home system is only used in a very small number of buildings in first-tier cities, and the market is blank for development. It is understood that Honeywell is a pioneer in energy, air purification, water purification, security, etc., and its strong scientific and technological accumulation has prepared for the fight against the market.

In May 2015, Air Touch-S smart air purifier was launched. This is an important step that Honeywell has taken from the industrial and commercial fields to the livelihood and household field, and it marks Honeywell's opening of a new situation in the smart home. Since then, Honeywell has successively launched three air purifier models including Air Touch-P, Air Touch-X and an upgraded version of Air Touch-X2, as well as Aqua Touch 600 and Aqua Touch 600S water purifiers, and the market has responded very well.

Unexpectedly, China's smart home market has brought rich returns to Honeywell. In 2013, China became Honeywell's largest market outside the United States, and now, China is Honeywell's most important source of growth. Take Honeywell's smart home air purification and water purification business as an example. From 2013 to 2016, Honeywell's smart home business grew by nearly 80% annually on average. Honeywell's Air Touch series of air purifiers have become a classic product in the air purifier industry within just two years of their launch, and have consistently ranked among the top five in sales of similar products on JD.com for a long time.

Cut into smart home from air purification and water purification

Although Honeywell’s department responsible for air purification and water purification has been dubbed "smart home", in fact, so far, the smart home products of this department are limited to air purifiers and water purifiers. As we all know, a smart home is a system composed of a platform and a lot of smart hardware. If there are only two types of products, it cannot be the scale of a smart home. From this point, we can see that in the long run, Honeywell has very good expectations for the Chinese smart home market. In the short term, Honeywell’s actions in the smart home market are actually very cautious. Small areas.

Choosing an air purifier as an entry point is a manifestation of Honeywell's implementation of the "Oriental Serving the Orient" strategy in China. There is a very convincing example: In the United States, families have high demand for temperature control, so smart homes in the United States start with thermostats. In China, people are more concerned about air pollution. Honeywell launched the air The purifier has received very good market response. In China today, drinking water is also a matter of great concern to people. In combination with this situation, Honeywell has launched a new water purifier product-Aqua Touch 600 water purifier to help more Chinese families get better quality drinking water.

Honeywell also has its own unique understanding of the concept of intelligence. "Intelligence" is not a blind pursuit of high technology, not to make life more complicated, but to make life simpler and better. There are many levels of intelligence. In English, the literal translation of "intelligence" is Artificial Intelligence, which is the highest level of intelligence; connecting to WiFi is another level of "intelligence"; and the basic level is user experience. Perhaps some equipment or products do not have very sophisticated technology, but it is very "smart" because it fully considers the detailed needs of users in all aspects, making it easy to use and operate. For example, Honeywell’s Aqua Touch 600 is a good example. Its filter element design, panel indicator design, holiday mode design, etc., are all based on user experience considerations, which implies "smart" Thinking, this is also the most basic starting point of "intelligence".

From the understanding of intelligence, it can be realized that the smart products created by Honeywell are not based on the pursuit of how cool technology, but with more intimate product design as the main purpose. There was once a Honeywell design engineer, he was the father of the child. In the early days of developing the Air Touch air purifier, the father found that his daughter was particularly curious about these products, and always wanted to press this button. At that time, the engineer was thinking, why can’t our products not only ensure the safety of children’s use, but also satisfy the children’s curiosity to explore new things? So the developers put these experiences into the design of Air Touch air purifiers. In the middle, the operation interface is very simple, one-key opening, and the "child lock" is abandoned, but once the machine shell is opened, the power will be cut off immediately.

Honeywell was originally an industrial manufacturing company that mainly produces hardware. Now it is striving to transform into an interconnected industrial enterprise. The software development capability is the basis for the transformation that Honeywell particularly emphasizes, and it is also the ability to make smart home products. Honeywell has 22,800 R&D personnel, more than half of which are software developers. The software development strength provides strong technical support to help Honeywell make more people-oriented and human-used smart home products.

Expansion of smart home business lines

The wave of smart homes has come. At this year's CES, nearly 1,000 brands or exhibitors can be classified as "smart homes", and there are many smart home devices and systems on the market for consumers to choose from. Two years after entering the field of smart home, Honeywell low-key announced that business in this field has begun to expand.

Honeywell's smart home business will combine E&ES (Environment and Energy Efficiency Solutions Division) and HSF (Security and Fire Protection Division) in the field of smart interconnection and environmental health products in the home field, and its subsidiaries will cover: smart home, electrical products and residential security business line. Honeywell is constantly innovating and enriching its product line, and gradually improving the ecosystem in the field of smart home products.

The smart home market at home and abroad is in a period of rapid growth. Both domestic and foreign companies are at a loss and confusion: there are many platforms, different standards, and various products. Although there are many single products, they cannot become a system. Honeywell has temporarily successfully entered the smart home market with two smart single products of air purification and water purification. However, it is still unknown whether the fields that it will enter in the future can replicate the success of the two products.

Because the smart home industry is a relatively new field, consumers don't know much about it. Many people have just come into contact with this concept but don't understand their real needs. Therefore, the biggest challenge for companies is to fully understand the needs of consumers. Honeywell has made great efforts in this field and is full of confidence in the prospects of this new market.

In this market, each manufacturer and each brand has its own characteristics, some are good at entertainment, and some are platform-based. Honeywell admitted frankly that its advantage lies in its strong scientific and technological strength and deep accumulation of experience in the field of safety and health. In China, the need for safe air and water is urgent, so Honeywell starts with air purifiers and water purifiers. However, Honeywell does not only have technological advantages in single products like Liangjing. It should be noted that as a company with a wide range of technologies and a multi-faceted technology, Honeywell's ambition is smart home health. The overall solution, which will become their main market segment in the future.

Smart home has four very important elements: equipment, platform, software, and service. These four points constitute Honeywell's advantage in the smart home market, and Honeywell is also working hard to improve these four elements.