World Smart Home Patent Analysis Report (ii)

How to layout the smart home?Samsung and Midea are keen on these big tech fields

1. Global principal applicant: Samsung leads the global smart home industry, midea is at the helm of China's patent application

1. Application volume analysis

Foreign companies account for five of the world's top ten patent applications in the smart home sector, with South Korean companies occupying the top two spots.Samsung, at the top of the list, accounts for only about 3 per cent of global patent filings.It can be seen that a large number of enterprises want to enter the smart home industry, and the technology of the industry is relatively dispersed, not concentrated in the hands of a small number of enterprises.

Table 1.1 The top 10 applicants of the smart home industry in terms of patent applications

2. Technical distribution analysis of principal applicants

Figure 1.1 Technical distribution of principal applicants

Based on the statistical analysis of the sub-technical fields of the patents applied by the ten main applicants, it can be seen that the sub-technical fields with more hot spots and researches are concentrated in the classification numbers of H04L(digital transmission), G05B (control and adjustment system), H04W (wireless communication) and so on.The early stage of the smart home above the terminal mainly concentrated in the intelligent home appliance, and today, with the industry to further exploration of smart home, intelligent management and control system is more and more important, control and management is intelligent household system related technical field in recent years, the focus of the development direction, is also the main direction of the focus of the applicant, the layout.As can be seen from Figure 1.1, large multinational companies such as Samsung, LG and SOMFY SAS attach the most importance to the patent distribution in these fields, and the competition in these fields is bound to become increasingly fierce in the future.

II. Samsung's patent layout: focus on electronics and Internet control, and attach importance to the U.S. and South Korea market

1. Global application trend of Samsung's smart home patent

Samsung's patent application is based on The Market layout of South Korea, pays attention to the United States and China, and takes into account other countries or regions, and the layout is sustainable.Since the 1980s, Samsung has continued to apply for patents in South Korea, the United States and other regions, and in recent years, its r&d investment and layout have increased significantly.In the technical layout, networking and control technology, home appliance terminal control technology is the focus of Samsung's research and development in recent years, at the same time, the number of patents in the field of telemedicine, security technology has increased significantly.The following is a detailed introduction of Samsung's global market and technology layout.

1) Market layout

Table 2.1 Patent layout of Samsung in various countries/regions

Figure 2.1 Patent application trend chart of Samsung in the smart home industry

As can be seen from the trend chart of Samsung's total applications over the years, the number of its patent applications grew slowly before 2013, but showed an explosive growth trend from 2014.From the perspective of Samsung's patent entry in various countries and regions, Samsung's patent application in South Korea is the most vigorous, accounting for 50% of the South Korean market.In its overseas market layout, Samsung pays the most attention to the United States, which has strong consumption power and strong market domination and leading ability. The rate of its patents entering the United States is much higher than that of other countries and regions.By contrast, Samsung has a lower percentage of patents in China, Europe and Japan.

For Chinese smart home enterprises, on the one hand, due to the low proportion of Samsung patents entering China in the smart home field, the existing patent layout can be fully analyzed for timely layout;On the other hand, the proportion of Samsung entering Japan, Europe and other countries or regions is also low, and the risk of infringement of Samsung's patent right when Chinese smart home products enter the above-mentioned regions is relatively low, so we can focus on and preemp the market layout.

2) Technical layout

Figure 2.2 Technical layout of Samsung's patent application

In the process of patent layout, Samsung focuses on H04L(digital transmission), H04W (wireless communication) and other sub-technical fields.The early stage of the smart home above the terminal mainly concentrated in the intelligent home appliance, and today, with the industry to further exploration of smart home, intelligent management and control system is more and more important, so technology related to the control and management system is the development difficulties of smart home is also the focus of the development direction in recent years, samsung electronics, the Internet control has been walking in the world's highest, is also the most patents in the field of the distribution.

2. Key patent analysis of Samsung

In August 2014, Samsung bought Smart Things, a US venture that develops an open platform for Smart homes, to help drive its Plans for the Internet of Things.Smart Things, which allows users to control appliances through their smartphones and watches, has been seen as key to Samsung's plans for the Smart home and Internet of Things.Held in Berlin, Germany in September 2014 the European confortec "IFA 2014" on, samsung electronics has revealed its position in public recognition, no alarm service, energy monitoring, voice control technology and so on four new technologies related to smart home, and samsung and open new technology is characterized by biggest object (electronics) can be the first to respond to his master, automatic master be fond of according to act.

To this, Samsung has carried out patent layout.The disclosed and authorized patent (CN201410781238.2) involves a comprehensive utilization system and method of smart home service rules, which proposes the following scheme: store, index or find service rule templates and service rule instances through service rule access module;These modules are then shared through service rule sharing module.When the smart home environment meets all trigger conditions in the service rule instance, the execution action in the service rule instance is triggered and the action name and action parameters are recorded.This scheme can set the service rules according to the habit recorded many times, so that each service command does not need to be set by people, but automatically starts according to the situation and habit, ready to welcome the host home, greatly improving the universality and convenience of the system.

In February 2015, SmartThings unveiled its second generation smart home automation hub, which can monitor indoor temperature and humidity, among other things, by connecting sensors in a user's home.The patent application submitted by Samsung Electronics Co., LTD. (WO2016036062A1) relates to a method and device for setting up heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to control indoor temperature and relative humidity.Through access to environmental information such as the indoor temperature, outdoor temperature, relative humidity, and biometric information users to determine the control information, such as fingerprints, body temperature, and based on the information of control to control the HVAC system, enables users don't have to manually and repeated input set to control the temperature and humidity, improve the environmental comfort and save energy.

III. Midea patent layout: Work with Alibaba to make smart home appliance terminal layout better

1. China's patent application situation of Midea smart home

Midea Group's patent layout in the field of smart home is mainly concentrated in China, and its patent applications in other countries or regions have not been searched yet. This paper mainly analyzes midea's patent applications in China.

Figure 3.1 Trend chart of Midea's patent application in the smart home industry

The search results showed that Midea started to apply for smart home patents in China only in 2011.Despite a late start compared with multinational companies such as Samsung and LG, the number of patent applications has grown rapidly.Among Chinese enterprises, the number of applications in the field of smart home is the highest, the patent authorization rate remains at a high level, and the proportion of invention patents is gradually increasing.

1) Technical layout

Figure 3.2 Technical layout of Midea patent application

When Midea company carries out patent layout, H04L(digital transmission), H04W (wireless communication) and other technical fields occupy a relatively large proportion.Different from Samsung, Midea G05B(control and adjustment system) has the largest technical field distribution, which is inseparable from the identity of traditional home appliance manufacturers.Midea Company combines its own traditional home appliance experience, gives play to its own advantages, and carries out patent layout in intelligent home appliance terminal, such as intelligent air conditioner and intelligent lighting.With the industry's further exploration of smart home and the maturing of networking and control technology, the improvement of intelligent terminal will be a key technical field.

2. Key patent analysis of Midea Company

In March 2014, Midea signed a cloud strategic cooperation agreement with Alibaba Group, and midea officially entered into the intelligent industry.The first smart product to be launched is the Internet of Things smart air conditioner, which is provided by Alibaba with cloud storage and big data to realize the interconnection and remote control of household appliances.In 2016, Midea officially released m-Smart Smart Ecological plan, announcing the opening and landing of Smart Life operation service platform.Based on its years of experience in traditional home appliances, Midea has carried out more patent layouts in intelligent home appliance terminals such as intelligent lighting and intelligent refrigerators.

FIG. 3.3 Schematic diagram of Midea intelligent home lighting control system

Midea Group Co.,Ltd. 's authorized patent (CN201510751317.3) provides a lighting control system for smart home, including lighting control device, monitoring device, cloud and control device.Lighting control device including light controller, monitoring devices monitoring body sensor signal, the control unit receives the monitoring device sends the human body sensor signal, and according to the human body sensor signals to judge whether the human body in the bed and sleep in the bed, and set the body in bed, not sleep in bed and fall asleep in bed under three kinds of states, the directives issued by the control device for lighting control system.This system can control the operation of light according to the different rest states of the human body, which solves the technical problem that the light cannot be automatically controlled to improve the sleep quality when people are in sleep or non-sleep state, so that the light control system can provide more convenience for people's life.

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