Recently, the Central Economic Work Conference was held in Beijing. The meeting comprehensively summarized the economic work in 2023, deeply analyzed the current economic situation, and systematically deployed the economic work in 2024.

The Central Economic Work Conference proposed that efforts should be made to expand domestic demand, stimulate potential consumption, and actively cultivate new consumption growth points such as smart homes, entertainment and tourism, sports events, and domestic products.

In recent years, with the support of national policies and the development of AI technology, the smart home industry has accelerated its evolution, and a large number of companies have entered the market. In addition to traditional home appliance manufacturers and Internet giants, start-ups and software and hardware service providers are also emerging. According to incomplete statistics, the number of A- share smart home listed companies has reached 100.

Although the development scale of smart home products is growing rapidly, the industry is still facing doubts about "pseudo-applications" and "pseudo-intelligence. On the one hand, the homogenization of smart home products is serious, the sales mode is similar, and the industry as a whole is still in the stage of "quantitative change"; on the other hand, there are still many development difficulties to be solved in terms of intelligent level, interconnection and security.

The smart home industry blossoms

at present, with the landing of artificial intelligence, internet of things, 5G and other technologies in the home field, smart home has gradually moved from the intelligent single product of human-computer interaction to the interconnected whole-house intelligent stage, and the industry is in a state of development of "all-in-one.

In recent years, driven by policies, many companies have accelerated the promotion of smart home business. From the perspective of types, they are mainly divided into home appliance companies, home furnishing companies, Internet companies, communications companies, chip companies, foundry companies, etc. Faction.

Compared with other smart industries, the smart home industry chain spans a wide range, showing a multi-point flowering in the segment. From upstream hardware and software support enterprises, to midstream system platform providers and smart home product suppliers, as well as downstream online and offline sales channels and real estate developers, smart home research covers components, middleware, Internet of Things, AI, system platforms, products, etc.

According to the 21st Century Business Herald, a reporter found that there are currently 100 smart home companies listed on the-share market.

as of December 28, 2023, there were 11 companies with a market value of over 100 billion yuan, namely midea group (000333.SZ), haikangweishi (002415.SZ), industrial fulian (601138.SH), lixun precision (002475.SZ), SMIC (688981.SH), Haier zhijia (600690.SH), gree electric appliance (000651.S25.S0000), s0000.

it can be found that in addition to the original "three giants of white power", many head chip manufacturers have also laid out the smart home field, and among the enterprises that are not listed on the-share market are Huawei, Xiaomi, Ali, Baidu and other Internet giants.

From a policy perspective, in August 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments jointly issued the "Action Plan for Promoting the High-quality Development of the Home Furnishing Industry", proposing to accelerate the construction of a standard system in the smart home field.

On July 18, 2023, the website of the Ministry of Commerce issued the ''Notice of the Ministry of Commerce and Other 13 Departments on Several Measures to Promote Household Consumption'', proposing to support enterprises to use the Internet of Things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other technologies to accelerate smart home appliances and smart security R & D of home products such as smart lighting, smart sleep, smart health care, smart audio and video entertainment.

Specifically, smart homes can be divided into four categories: smart furniture, smart home appliances, smart home improvement, and smart home textiles.

among them, intelligent furniture includes intelligent sofas, cabinets and toilets. Intelligent household appliances include intelligent audio, refrigerators, washing machines, projectors, door locks, rice cookers and sweeping robots. At present, there are few related layouts of intelligent home decoration manufacturers, mainly decoration products such as intelligent floors and lighting products. Smart home textiles include smart mattresses and pillows.

among them, the household appliance enterprises are mainly the "three giants of white electricity". among the five major business sectors divided by midea group, the only c-end business is the smart home business group, which involves many fields in the industrial chain. in April 2023, midea group spun off its subsidiary meizhi optoelectronics to go to the growth enterprise market for IPO. the main business of meizhi optoelectronics is lighting and smart front-loading products.

Haier Zhijia will launch the three-wing bird scene brand in 2020, featuring all-scene solutions for smart homes such as balconies, kitchens, whole-house air, whole-house water, audio-visual, etc., to target the new generation of consumers. Data show that as of the third quarter of 2023, the three-wing bird landed in more than 2900 stores across the country. In the first three quarters, the transaction volume of the scene reached 4 billion yuan.

Gree electric appliances has five smart living systems of energy, air, health, security and light in the whole house. however, it has not yet launched an independent brand. in terms of market promotion, it has integrated smart home into Gree stores and displayed the whole house-linked Gree Shu family. in 2022, it will land in 20 Gree Shu family stores nationwide. however, there is no revenue data in the report. compared with the other two white power giants, the layout is relatively weak.

although the revenue of the smart home sector in 2022 accounts for only 4.90 of the total revenue, the overall growth trend is relatively fast. Mainly relying on the subsidiary fluorite network (688475.SH), the main products include smart home cameras, smart door locks, smart control screens, smart service robots and other smart home products.

SMIC mainly provides chip services for smart home products, with business revenue in the smart home sector accounting for 14% of total revenue in 2022. Industrial Fulian and Lixun Precision mainly cooperate with customers to develop and produce smart home products, including home monitoring, entertainment audio and video, smart audio, etc.

In addition to home appliance companies, chip companies, and foundry companies, home furnishing companies are also a force that cannot be ignored in the smart home industry.

among them, gu Jia home (603816.SH) currently takes smart home, smart bed, self-gravity single chair and electric storage bed as the four main innovative research lines, and has applied for nearly 600 patents.

Shangpin home delivery (300616.SZ) is seeking a breakthrough in the field of smart home solutions. It has carried out strategic cooperation and set up a joint venture with Ruizhu Intelligent Company in the field of whole house intelligence. The two sides will jointly create products and solutions based on the integration of software and hardware of home scenes and smart home upgrade solutions.

Dongpeng Holdings (003012.SZ) actively with the Internet of Things enterprises, to achieve from the bathroom intelligent single product to the systematic intelligent integrated delivery direction.

in addition, euribo released energy storage hot water central air conditioner to enter the smart new energy home market. Qisheng Technology Continues to Develop Customized and Personalized Healthy Sleep Life; Siniemann-AI Home Announces Acceleration of Digital Transformation of Enterprises; Yingzhi Technology mentioned that the future layout will strengthen the interconnection and compatibility of products. Home shopping malls represented by Incredible Home and Hongxing Meikailong continue to expand smart home categories and services.

Under the integration and development of the smart home ecology, the boundaries between communication companies, Internet companies, home appliance companies and home furnishing companies have become increasingly blurred, and competition and cross-border cooperation between giants in different fields have become a trend.

In terms of Internet companies, Huawei and Xiaomi have become representative companies in the field of smart home layout.

Xiaomi started its layout as early as 2013. Through the strategic thinking of "investment + incubation", Xiaomi has successively launched a series of ecological chain products such as smart TV, smart refrigerator, smart socket, smart lighting equipment and air purifier.

Huawei entered the smart home in 2018. as a communication technology manufacturer, Huawei's strength lies in linking, and its thinking is to "cover the dots with faces" and use hongmeng interconnection to realize interconnection and interaction between smart home appliances. according to the latest data disclosed by Huawei, currently hongmeng interconnection has more than 2400 partners, with more than 0.36 billion new linked smart devices and more than 6400 types of smart products.

However, because of the many factions, the smart home industry is currently in a state of fierce competition.

A professional analyst in the industry told reporters, "Smart home products have been continuously launched in the past two years, but the actual product functions and facilities are similar, the homogeneity problem is more serious, and the channel sales model is also facing reform and innovation."

Intelligence, security, and ecological problems to be solved

Compared with overseas markets, my country's demand for smart homes is still in its infancy, mainly focusing on smart speakers, smart light bulbs, smart door locks and other single items. The overall smart home system has not yet formed a unified connection standard and mature Market format.

At present, China's smart home market is still facing various challenges, including the lack of interoperability of products, diverse user needs, lack of product pain points, security privacy concerns, immature supply chain management and so on.

Zhao Meimei, assistant to the president and general manager of the innovation department of Oviyun, believes that "although there are various challenges, the general direction and long-term trend of the smart home market will not change."

In terms of intelligence, among the smart home products that consumers generally come into contact with, the most widely used AI technology is voice recognition, face recognition, fingerprint recognition, etc., but the level of intelligence still needs to be improved.

some people in the industry told reporters, "although users can have simple communication and dialogue with smart home products, it is difficult for them to carry out some complicated operations, and they cannot really replace human beings in life. moreover, there are also some usage problems from time to time, such as identification errors, network disconnection and paralysis, downloading different app for different items, etc."

Zhao Meimei believes that "it is precisely because the itching points of smart home products are more than the pain points of users' needs that there are still very few categories in the current outbreak." She said that smart home products need to be personalized through the home AI intelligent brain analysis, for different users in different scenarios to implement customized solutions.

The above industry insiders said that the improvement of intelligence is a long journey. Smart home applications need to have enough devices, strong enough ability to sense the user's state, stable enough connections, and enough computing power to fit the user's habits before artificial intelligence can really play its most ideal role.

In terms of security, smart home related products are closely related to personal and family life. A large amount of user privacy data will be generated during use. Once hacked or other technical loopholes appear, user data and privacy will be affected. Leakage.

Zhao Meimei said that the huge equipment base, coupled with widespread fragmentation and software and hardware vulnerability, makes the cost of IoT device attacks extremely low, attacks tend to be large-scale and develop rapidly, and security threats have become the norm in the IoT field. Smart home security access requirements are high, lack of overall security solutions, security operations are difficult, and security standards are uneven.

In terms of interconnection and interoperability, the current smart home industry is basically in a state of separate warfare.

according to major general ding, chief analyst of GKURC think tank, smart home is mainly divided into three development stages: single-product intelligence, set-up intelligence and whole-house intelligence. at present, smart home is still in the stage of developing from single-product intelligence to set-up intelligence. although smart home is still in the early stage from the perspective of technology and popularity, the overall industry is developing in the direction of whole-house intelligence and applied intelligence, the entire industry has found a common development goal.

HoweverOne of the biggest pain points in the development of whole-house intelligence is interconnection. Major brands are still in a state of ecological separation and all want to occupy the right to speak. As a result, it is difficult for different brands of intelligent items to realize interconnection, thus affecting the whole-house intelligence and interconnection efficiency.

Specifically, at present, smart home enterprises have problems such as ecological closure, weak interaction, low localization level of upstream core chip sensors, and lack of unified product standards in the industry.

Zhao Meimei believes that "only with comprehensive interconnection, equipment vendors, platforms, and service providers in the industrial chain can build a clear perimeter and dig deep around the user roots."

Technology accelerates cross-border integration

The pain point of the unified standard for smart home has also been concerned by the national government. In April this year, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council jointly issued the "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Accelerating the Construction of a Unified National Market", which clearly stated that "promote the unification of standards in smart homes, security and other fields, and explore the establishment of a smart device identification system." National policies help accelerate the work of standards.

as early as 2019, apple, Google, Amazon and the then Zigbee alliance developed an underlying common protocol standard across different platforms -- Matter protocol, hoping to break the barriers between different smart home ecosystems. since the Matter protocol made its debut in Europe in September last year, more and more smart home categories have joined the certification.

However, some people in the industry pointed out that most smart home devices on the domestic market are still on the sidelines of the Matter agreement. In the view of wait-and-see enterprises, supporting the Matter agreement not only requires the redevelopment of the existing smart home framework, but also will transfer the market advantage that they have established to a certain extent.

according to ABI Research, a professional research organization, the Matter agreement is an attractive agreement in the field of smart home. from 2022 to 2030, a total of 5.5 billion Matter devices will be shipped. by 2030, the annual shipment of Matter certified products will exceed 1.5 billion units.

According to Ovie Cloud, 2023 will be a key milestone year for the Matter agreement, with more innovative products compatible with the Matter agreement launched and eventually reaching end consumers. With the iteration of the Matter protocol, it will help solve the problem of interconnection and further improve the overall ecosystem of smart home.

In addition, as the concept of ChatGPT continues to be hot, AI technology has been more widely used in home life scenes. People have a new understanding of the natural language processing capabilities driven by artificial intelligence technology, and it also provides more imagination for the future development of smart home appliances and smart homes.

the oviyun network report points out that the development of China's smart home market has five major driving forces, including the improvement of users' awareness and acceptance of scene purchase and set purchase, the strengthening of interconnection by Matter agreement, the two-wheel drive of rear-mounted and front-mounted markets, the further improvement of the service capability of smart home, the change of AI technology and the non-sensitization of the entrance of smart home.

With the continuous change and development of AI technology, the entrance of smart home will gradually realize non-sensibility, while taking into account the safety and convenience of smart home, and realize the transformation of smart home from "smart" to "smart.

At this stage, smart home products are mainly voice commands and one question and one answer interaction. Zhao Meimei said that with the development of AI technology, smart home products can meet the requirements of active understanding and active intelligence, and the level of interaction with users will also reach a new level.

CICC recently released a research report saying that the generative AI system represented by ChatGPT is an upgrade of the interaction mode of smart home, and its future application direction is smart home products represented by smart speakers and home escort robots.

at present, AI leaders have paid attention to this direction. recently, xunfei of the university of science and technology said in an institutional survey that the company will launch a family service robot in the future. it plans to let the machine perceive people and the environment in all aspects, understand knowledge in all walks of life, have general knowledge and emotion, and can move flexibly and express in multiple dimensions.

guangfa securities said that AI downstream applications led by AIGC have been rapidly rolled out to promote the completion of the leap from "interconnection of everything" to "empowerment of everything". the home appliance industry will also benefit from the development of AI technology, and the intelligent level of single products and scene-based experience are expected to be further improved.

"It is estimated that the smart home market will reach 18.2 percent in 2023 and the compound growth rate will reach about 20 percent by 2025." Zhao Meimei believes that at present, China is in the comprehensive outbreak period of smart home. People pay more attention to the improvement of family happiness and experience. The market channel of smart home is gradually opening up, and the market development prospect is very broad.