In June this year, "Fortune" (Chinese version) released an inventory of "China's major overseas players worthy of attention in 2023", focusing on seven tracks of overseas companies that are constantly exploring new fields and growing in influence. Tuya Smart was successfully selected. As a global company, compared to the traditional overseas model of selling products directly overseas, Tuya Smart's product model of providing a package of services to overseas companies can be successful. In addition to its own focus and innovation in the IoT field, Tuya Smart can be successful. In addition, thanks to its long-term cooperation with Amazon Cloud Technology, relying on the capabilities of cloud services to cover every corner of the world - Tuya Smart currently provides IoT services to 220 countries and regions around the world.
Not only that, in the face of global warming and the new competitive landscape of the IoT market, in order to truly achieve sustainable development, Tuya Smart has also deployed in cutting-edge fields such as home energy management systems (HEMS) in advance to seize business opportunities in this emerging blue ocean market.
In the nine years since its founding, Tuya Smart has had successful experiences and insights in going global. How has cooperation with Amazon Cloud Technology enhanced the value of the industrial chain? What shortcomings do we still need to overcome when going overseas? What opportunities does the emerging HEMS mean for Chinese companies? ?
Global heat wave hits, calling for HEMS to combat climate change
This summer is extremely hot! On July 3, according to data from the U.S. Meteorological Agency, this was the day with the highest average temperature on record in the world. The global average temperature exceeded 17 degrees Celsius for the first time. Just one day later, the record for "the hottest day on Earth" was broken again. It is foreseeable that this record will be repeatedly refreshed in the future.
In response, the World Meteorological Organization mobilized countries to prepare early warnings to reduce the impact on human health, ecosystems and economies. The most intuitive impact is that high-energy-consuming home appliances such as air conditioners have become products that consumers are rushing to buy. As a result, the concept of home energy management system (HEMS) has been valued again.
First of all, the concept and products of home energy management systems have been proposed in Europe and the United States as early as the 1970s. However, due to various reasons, the market penetration rate is extremely low, and there are also obvious technical flaws. "In the home electricity system, many places are still limited by wired protocols. The number of connected devices is relatively low, and the connection with the power company has not yet been established. Each layer is disconnected."
Even such a rudimentary system "can help some ordinary households in the United States and Europe save 30% of energy usage every year, which can save more than 400 US dollars in electricity bills in a year." But now based on the IoT platform, home energy management systems have With a clearer path to implementation, and considering the skyrocketing energy prices in Europe and the United States in the past two years, the market has begun to become profitable.
From the perspective of product implementation, products such as smart sockets and smart thermostats with power-saving functions have appeared and are gradually favored by consumers in overseas markets. These emerging products are members of the smart home family. Tuya Smart's product concept is more radical. It not only aims to create a matrix of interconnected smart power devices, but also achieves refined power consumption statistics, and ultimately realizes energy saving and emission reduction at home through household power strategy management.
Imagine boldly that once HEMS becomes popular on a large scale, the electricity bills consumers receive will also change drastically. Future electricity bills will be similar to current mobile phone bills, with detailed electricity usage time and usage for large and small household appliances, lamps and other products. Electricity can be listed by category, such as how many kilowatt-hours of electricity are used by refrigerators and air conditioners this month, and whether a single product consumes more electricity or saves energy compared with last month. This can give consumers a more intuitive understanding of the power consumption of electrical appliances. Detail and use energy-saving algorithms to direct the operation and shutdown of appliances to optimize electricity bills.
At present, the best market for HEMS is Europe and the United States.
From the perspective of the global environment, on the one hand, energy prices are rising, and on the other hand, the implementation time limit of the Paris Agreement to address climate change is getting closer and closer. The concepts of zero carbon and carbon peak are deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Just as the price of smart home products seemed to be out of reach ten years ago, but now they have already entered the homes of ordinary people. The number of connected smart home products worldwide has exceeded tens of billions. The implementation of HEMS products in the future is not out of reach, especially in summer. If the global heat wave continues, perhaps the pace of turning vision into reality will be significantly accelerated.
Judging from the development context of the smart home industry itself, audio-visual entertainment, home life, and security protection products have been greatly enriched, and the market competition is extremely fierce. Only the field of smart energy management, which has been neglected for a long time, is still in the early stages of development. This means that it contains huge development potential and is an out-and-out blue ocean market.
From the perspective of corporate development, Tuya Smart seized the explosive growth of smart homes nine years ago and determined the platform development path of "connection + ecology". With the strong support of partners such as Amazon, Then in the next ten years, once the trend comes, Tuya Smart's cutting-edge layout in HEMS will have a great chance to reap fruitful results.
Join hands with Amazon Cloud Technology to help the IoT market innovate and prosper
With the unprecedented prosperity of the IoT market in the past decade, Tuya Smart has stood out in this wave of IoT innovation and accurately found its market positioning - the company does not manufacture hardware products, but provides customers with one-stop IoT solutions. Its main customer groups are overseas companies. In this process, the cooperation with Amazon Cloud Technology plays an important role.
Na Jingdan said: "Tuya has positioned itself as an international company in its early days. If Amazon Cloud Technology had not been chosen at the beginning, the path to globalization might not have been so smooth. We are grateful from the bottom of our hearts."
The IoT industry has a core technical pain point: downstream application scenarios and requirements are highly fragmented. This will lead to diversification of network communication methods and platforms, posing greater challenges to the interconnection and interoperability of devices. In addition, it also needs to deploy cloud networks globally. Public data shows that as of the end of March this year, the Tuya IoT developer platform covered more than 200 countries and regions, with more than 782,000 registered developers worldwide. It has formed a huge developer ecological advantage, and Amazon Cloud Technology has the foundation to cover the world. Facilities and localized service deployment capabilities have also become a booster for Tuya Smart to achieve globalization.
As a global IoT platform, Tuya has extremely high requirements for the selected cloud services in terms of reliability, stability, and scalability. For example, the service response time should be controlled within 100ms. By using cloud services such as computing, storage, database, and data transmission provided by Amazon Cloud Technology, the reliability of Tuya Cloud Service Platform has reached 99.99%, and its stability is greatly guaranteed.
“Choosing a good technical service provider like Amazon Cloud Technology can help us solve the practical pain points of going overseas,” Na Jingdan emphasized.
In China, Tuya Smart’s overseas journey supported by Amazon Cloud Technology is not just an isolated case. More than 80% of Chinese companies going overseas have chosen Amazon Cloud Technology as their overseas partner. By leading the industry in security compliance, global infrastructure, more than 200 types of cloud services, a global partner network, mature and rich customer practices, and the strong support of Amazon's global business system, Amazon Cloud Technology has protected Chinese companies going overseas for the past ten years. convoy.
Looking back on the cooperation journey between the two parties, Na Jingdan shared a detail: "The organizational structures of our two companies are very flat, and we can serve local customers together. You have me, and I have you, so we can meet the needs of customers. to respond in a timely manner.” This largely reveals the secret of Tuya Smart’s success as a “B2B2C” enterprise: standing on the shoulders of giants.