Just a few years ago, the fashionable theme in the Internet entrepreneurial circle was "software is king", and hardware was often regarded as a sunset industry with high investment and low profits. However, just in the past year or two, more and more ideas have begun to emerge in the hardware industry: tablet computers, wearable devices, driverless cars, 3D printers... Among them, there are a large number of software manufacturers, and even many "outsiders" have begun to try out hardware design.

Why is hardware suddenly popular? Industry experts believe that this is an inevitable trend brought about by the penetration of the Internet into hardware and even all walks of life. In this wave, a series of outstanding Chinese original brands have emerged, and "Created in China" faces huge opportunities to "turn around".

"Cool" products emerge one after another

Recently, there are really a lot of "cool" hardware products. Domestic and foreign developers span all walks of life, and the hardware they launch also covers various categories, and the prices are generally "friendly".

Meitu Xiuxiu recently launched the Meitu Kiss mobile phone, a "selfie artifact", priced at more than 2,000 yuan; Instagram, a foreign photo sharing software application, announced that it will launch a camera next year with built-in Instagram filters and the ability to quickly print out photos, priced at $299.

Also involved in the hardware circle is the entertainment empire Disney, which recently released the Magic1 series of mobile phones full of animation elements in Beijing, priced at 1,999 yuan; Intel's first open source personal computer "Minnow Board" has also begun to be sold in many online stores, priced at 199 US dollars.

Another innovative product that has been highly praised by industry insiders is Google’s Chromecast TV stick. This $35 product can be plugged into the HD MI interface of a TV to play online videos.

In this trend of hardware entrepreneurship, there are big-name companies, and more are unknown small companies. The "smart socket" developed by Jiao Electronic Technology allows users to remotely control the switches in their homes through the Internet's "cloud service". The designer Liu Zongru told reporters that in order to save costs, all the products he developed are released through the "crowdfunding" model, which is a financing model in which websites raise funds from the public. Several trading companies and venture capitalists have already approached him through the website to place orders and provide funding. Gold support.

Zhang You, CEO of "Roll Call Time", the first domestic crowdfunding website, found that there are more and more entrepreneurs of smart consumer hardware products on the crowdfunding website platform. For this reason, "Roll Call Time" also held a crowdfunding conference with the theme of smart consumption not long ago.

Small companies are an important force in this wave of hardware entrepreneurship. In order to support more makers to make their dreams come true, Dragon Innovation, a consulting company that has invested in smart watches PebbleWatch and 3D printing company MakerBot, plans to use the recently obtained US$2.3 million in financing to help hardware startups promote and raise funds.