In the past year, affected by the "black swan" of the epidemic, and against the background of a slightly quiet economy, the health industry bucked the trend and ran an "upward curve." The value of life and health has been re-examined, and the health industry has become a new growth pole for high-quality economic development.
Such a vast "health" blue ocean is becoming a hot spot for businesses to catch the wave, attracting capital and large companies to compete. Whether it is Alibaba, JD.com, Tencent with their own Internet genes, or real estate giants such as Vanke, Evergrande, Wanda, etc., they are all vying to enter the health track to "get a share of the pie." Among them, home appliance giants represented by Haier, Midea, TCL, Gree, etc. have also "crossed over into the industry" and become a unique force accelerating the reform and reshaping of the medical and health industry.
From an international perspective, established companies such as home appliance giants Philips, GE, and Siemens have all transferred their home appliance businesses and instead focused on the medical device market and the general health market. Domestically, leading home appliance companies such as Haier, Midea, TCL, and Gree have entered the new health track through different paths.
There are thousands of ways to transform. Why do home appliance giants unanimously extend their "tentacles" to the seemingly unrelated medical industry?
From the perspective of the external environment, the new Since the launch of the medical reform, encouraging social capital to run hospitals has lowered the industry threshold and guided many private capitals to enter the medical field to "test the waters."
From within the industry, Chinese home appliance companies, which have always valued independent research and development and have strong technological capabilities, hope to break out of the traditional home appliance industry and transform into high technology.
From a technical perspective, the two major industries appear to have clear barriers, but in fact they have their own associated logic. The trend of cross-border integration between medicine and electronic information technologies such as semiconductor display, artificial intelligence and sensing technology is increasingly emerging. Cross-border medical care through home appliances is a related and diversified transformation strategy worth trying.
From the perspective of industrial demand, the unexpected epidemic has brought the health industry into the era of "universal demand". Since last year, the health industry has suddenly emerged, achieving a "double increase" in its share of GDP and its growth rate. At the same time, people's requirements for medical standards are increasing day by day, and the medical industry, which has been suffering from long-term slow development and uneven resources, is in urgent need of disruptors.
With the superposition of multiple factors, it is not difficult to understand that home appliance giants especially favor the "health circle".
Although they are riding waves in the same blue ocean, the home appliance giant is entering into different segments and striving to open up new paths in the health industry.
Among the segmented tracks, the medical device equipment manufacturing industry, which is located in the upstream of the general health industry, has the highest similarity with the home appliance manufacturing industry and has high profit margins. It has become the "first choice" for home appliance companies to cross-border out of the industry. . Internationally renowned home appliance companies Philips, GE, and Siemens have started competing in the upstream industry chain many years ago, starting from medical devices and equipment to develop in-depth layouts in the health industry.
Whether it is Philips gradually divesting its non-core home appliance business and deploying the health industry through mergers, acquisitions and cooperation, or Siemens acquiring Varian, a well-known European medical equipment company, for US$16.4 billion. The international home appliance giant "turned around" and focused on the strategic transformation of the medical and health industry. It can be said that there are constant actions.
Domestically, Midea Group is trying to get involved with capital and expand its territory in the medical equipment industry. Before acquiring Wandong Medical, Midea spent 29.2 billion yuan to acquire Germany's Kuka Robot in 2017 to develop medical robots and a series of health inspection and testing products. Since then, Midea has successively launched accelerated reconstruction in the health field. In 2020, Midea announced an investment of 10 billion yuan in Shunde, Guangdong to establish a non-profit hospital radiating to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
Unlike Midea, which has flourished in the medical industry, TCL focuses more on "doing things within its own knowledge." Derived from the main business, it enters the medical service field through a third-party independent imaging center, and extends to the medical electronics field by virtue of its competitiveness in the field of digital image processing technology. In this process, TCL seized the opportunity of the country to promote hierarchical diagnosis and treatment and encourage social forces to invest in independent medical institutions.
Starting from 2018, TCL has started to deploy third-party medical imaging centers. According to the official website information, TCL currently has 5 medical imaging centers in Guangdong, Jiaozuo, and Kunshan.
Haier has proposed an ecological strategy. In competing in the health industry, it has experienced a path to build a full life cycle ecology from the core of manufacturing. Relying on the core competitiveness of the manufacturing industry, Haier has entered the field of life sciences from medical low-temperature cold chain storage equipment, gradually built an ecosystem covering biomedicine, and connected the entire industrial chain.
Haier's big health ecological brand "Yingkang Life" is laid out around seven scenarios throughout the life cycle of "pregnancy, childbirth, long-term health and care". It has two listed companies in the health industry: Haier Biology (SH. 688139) and Yingkang Life (SZ.300143), as well as Haier Medical, Haier International Cell Bank, Yingkang Reproductive and other sectors. In the upstream medical equipment industry, Yingkang Life's wholly-owned subsidiary Masip is the leader in the field of tumor radiotherapy equipment; in the downstream core medical services for patients, the concept of "doctor-patient integration" is focused on decentralizing medical institutions. It provides personalized and scenario-based services and currently has 16 hospitals across the country.
Compared with peers who have already taken the lead in the health industry, Gree has just started to test the waters of health. Not long ago, Dong Mingzhu, chairman of Gree Electric Appliances, announced that he would invest 1 billion yuan in the research and development and production of high-end medical equipment. In 2020, Zhuhai Gejian Medical Technology Co., Ltd. and Tianjin Gree Xinhui Medical Equipment Co., Ltd. were established. Although there is no substantial development at present, Gree seems to have made up its mind to seize the medical device market with foreign-funded enterprises that have long dominated the market.
While all parties are competing for the health industry, the health industry is also accelerating innovation and reshaping driven by external forces.
In recent years, the "Healthy China" strategy has been steadily advancing and has been significantly improved in the implementation of a series of national policies. It is urgent to accelerate the establishment of a multi-level medical system and integrated full-cycle medical services.
As consumption gradually upgrades, the big health industry gradually extends from "disease treatment" to the full value chain of "health management", "disease prevention" and "rehabilitation management", and develops the health industry guided by people's health needs. , has become the only way to meet the people's growing needs for a better life.
According to the goals planned in the "Healthy China 2030" Planning Outline: the total scale of the health service industry will reach 16 trillion by 2030. For such a huge cake, giants will continue to enter the market with huge sums of money in the future. Although the goals and paths are different, it is foreseeable that the home appliance giants' diversified competition in the medical market will not only promote the technological iteration of the medical industry, but also press the accelerator button for the innovation of the health industry.
In the future, the development trend of the big health industry will be affected by health needs and population structure, policy guidance, technological progress, capital investment direction and many other factors. Whether it’s Midea’s multi-point bloom, Gree’s testing of waters, TCL’s “analogy”, or Haier’s construction of a full life cycle ecology in the field of health, the “Home Appliances Group” not only empowers cross-sectors, but also contributes to the domestic health industry. The innovative development has opened up new ideas.