Skyworth has announced that it is investing some $214 million into its smart home services initiative, citing new 5G and IoT opportunities in the home appliance industry – especially in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak. A new brand is being spun up for the project, called Swaiot, which stands for Skyworth AI and IoT systems.
The company is looking to leverage its 50 million TV users, both televisions and set tops, as the basis for an expansion into smart home services. Skyworth claims this ecosystem is already connected to 20 million devices, across 60 categories, with brands including Huawei, Mideo, Vivo, and JD.com. Yes, this does seem quite China-centric, although it could be expanded internationally in time.
In the announcement, Skyworth showed off the new Swaiot Panel tablet computer, which is being pitched as a control mechanism for in-home devices – pretty similar to how Apple positions iPads within its HomeKit ecosystem. Skyworth’s set tops and smart TVs should also be able to serve similar functions, but in the wider smart home, the TV has never really caught on as the primary control device.
We recall seeing a number of demonstrations at trade shows in the 2015-2016 period that used TVs as the primary screen for smart home controls. One from EchoStar stands out, which was able to bring security camera feeds into the TV, and interrupt the viewing of shows if the doorbell rang or if a security alarm was triggered.
However, in the years that followed, the voice-assistant devices took hold, and voice became the primary control method for the consumer smart home, followed by mobile devices. TVs are rarely seen in such functions these days, but Skyworth’s domestic Chinese market has not been well served by its local voice assistant platforms, and so its TVs stand a better chance at establishing consumer behavior habits than they would in markets where Amazon Echoes and Google Homes are so prevalent.
Skyworth’s strategy seems to center around the Swaiot Panel, an 8-inch or 10-inch touchscreen, which has been designed to be attached to home appliances via a magnetic mount. The screen is then meant to adapt to its environment, with one example being a treadmill, where the screen would begin to recommend workout music playlists. Another sees the screen placed in a kitchen, and act as a conduit for content being played on a living room TV, transferring the content from one room to another when triggered by a voice command.
It’s an unconventional approach, but one that might have a better chance of getting home appliance makers on board. The smart fridge has been the subject of ridicule for some years, and mostly for good reason. The concept of putting a screen on an appliance that didn’t ‘need’ it was set up to fail, and the screens that were installed didn’t do much in the way of justifying their existence. The user experience of browsing Twitter from a fridge is not better than a phone, and the manufacturer has to do an awful lot of extra work to enable such an underwhelming customer experience.
But the Swaiot approach is different. This is an auxiliary display, designed to help move content around a home in a flexible fashion, or to enhance an already useful appliance. For end-users, this is a way to add features to their home, without having to buy appliances with screens already built in.
Of course, this relies on Skyworth being able to create the backend ecosystem needed to be able to create such experiences, but there are compelling reasons that manufacturers would be interested. The approach means that appliances don’t have to take on the ‘risk’ of adding screens, which are expensive when considered through the entire design and production phase.
The manufacturer can then move that risk onto Skyworth, and will only have to add a small chipset or module to enable the Swaiot screen to interact with the device locally. If desired, the manufacturer could build more device-to-cloud complexity into the design, if it wants to pursue the usual IoT use cases, such as predictive maintenance, automated supply replenishment, and advanced customer engagement – via integrations with smart home platforms, for remote control and automation.
Of course, Skyworth would like to be the primary smart home platform, and if a manufacturer has gone as far as building compatibility with a Swaiot Panel, then it should be pretty comfortable with such cooperation. Sure, the end-device might be a glorified tablet, but if Skyworth can nail the user experience, such screens could be immensely valuable to consumers – as a way of transforming spaces within their homes, and potentially significantly increasing their media consumption.
As usual, we are going to treat smart home hardware plans with immense skepticism, but we can see the logic here. The success of the initiative will depend on signing up appliance manufacturers, so that Skyworth can build the ecosystem it wants to sell as a vision of the future. Its chances outside China seem slim, given the stickiness of the Amazon and Google experience, but in the same way that no one could see the Echo being the most successful smart home gadget, it’s still possible Skyworth could slide in there too.
At the conference that announced the new Swaiot initiative, Skyworth also unveiled the new G71 smart TV, which included a pop-up camera for video calls. Skyworth pointed to its application in remote work and online education, during the COVID-19 outbreak. It also launched the LIFErecorder 8K, a camera that is already embroiled in controversy it seems, with Z Cam claiming that its design has been ripped off by both Skyworth and Bosma. At around $2,800, the camera seems to be pitched at content creators, to then drive demand for 8K TVs – of which the Q91 was launched at CES 2020.