The router is difficult to human-computer interaction

A few months ago, when CEO Wang Chuyun of the pole route mentioned that he would learn from Lei Jun and Xiaomi, I did not pay much attention. After all, after the success of Xiaomi, the term "using the Internet to think as hardware" seems to have become the "standard" for today's Chinese hardware entrepreneurship. However, if you look at yesterday's new product launch conference, you will find Wang Chuyun is definitely more than just talk about it - emphasize your own hardware design process, claim to be based on OpenWrt deep customization system, pull the competition between routers into "Parametric Warfare", sales of engineering machines, and announcement of open source products to third-party developers to build a router ecosystem, and Wang Chuyun's "product word of mouth and friends with users"... There is no shadow of Xiaomi.

Of course, the most important thing is the “Internet thinking” that has been repeatedly mentioned on the one hand—on the one hand, rapid iteration of the software system enables it to integrate efficiently with the hardware, guaranteeing polar routing in game acceleration, application store acceleration, etc. On the other hand, selling products in a low-cost way relative to costs does not expect to gain profits on hardware, but instead depends on the model of “number of users → software ecosystem → monetization”. To achieve profitability.

Therefore, for such a router that has been “unswervingly” for a long time, Wang Chuyun and Pole Routing really make people feel a little new and have enough room for imagination. On the other hand, routers and mobile phones are two completely different products after all, and it is not necessary to completely imitate Xiaomi's model.

I have no doubt about the attractiveness of Pole Routing to the market - for users who have rigid requirements for its additional functions, Pole routing is currently the first choice in its class, and even if you only want to treat it as an ordinary For routers to use, it wouldn't be unreasonable to spend more than the price on a product with a more sophisticated hardware design and more features.

The problem is that there is still a long way to go between selling products to users and “creating fan culture among users.” This distance is difficult to overcome with router products.

First of all, the first “fans” of Xiaomi’s mobile phone are actually MIUI enthusiasts. Before Xiaomi launched the mobile phone, this fast iterative deep customization of the Android operating system helped Xiaomi capture the hearts of many players. Since then, MIUI has also become more loyal users with MIUI's advancement and the large shipments of Xiaomi's mobile phones.

This matter can be placed on the router, it is not so smooth - no matter how good the OpenWrt deep customization system based on, whether the polar routing "fast iteration" on it, it is always a difficult to establish human interaction with the user The "invisible" system, so it's hard to be a fan of it.

Second, at the hardware level, polar routing also faces similar logic - for many people, the mobile phone is a commodity that always accompanies it, in addition to spending a lot of time interacting with it every day, between people. Will compare with each other. Therefore, besides basic functions, personalization and fashion sense are characteristics that mobile phones must be endowed with, and it is these people’s differentiated demands on these software and hardware that allow them to become “fans” of mobile phones to carry around. may.

This is not true for routers. Even if it is designed to be intriguing, even if it can actually bring users superior experiences while surfing the Internet, the actual interactions with the users are devices such as mobile phones, tablets, and computers. Even if it is placed in the most prominent position, this fact cannot be changed.

Therefore, the router's natural properties determine that it is difficult to be a product for people to “fever”. Few people will consider replacing the router more frequently than they do for mobile phones, but this also means that once the polar route has a large scale, The user, it can silently guard its own place there, become a "software ecosystem" barrier.

That is to say, although there are many similarities in the overall thinking and millet, but the router is essentially a product that may never be able to "sexy", deliberately to manage fan culture may be a laborious and rewarding thing. For pole routing, it may be enough to make a good product.