2023 is coming to an end, looking back on the smart home industry this year, it is most appropriate to describe it with a sentence of "seeking change in stability". "Stability" refers to the steady development of the smart home industry, while "change" refers to the development of smart homes with the development of technologies such as the Internet of Things, generative AI, and Matter.
In terms of market structure, the development of the domestic smart home industry is still basically led by the four traditional home appliance manufacturers - Hisense, Midea, Haier, Gree, and the two upstarts - Huawei and Xiaomi.
The overall scale of the smart home industry continues to grow.
In 2023, the domestic market environment will improve, and the previous epidemic environment has also made more people aware of the importance of the family environment.
According to the China Smart Home Industry Alliance, the size of China's smart home market is expected to reach 7,157 in 2023100 million yuan (6,515 in 2022.)600 million yuan), and this year's shipments of China's smart home equipment market are expected to reach 3300 million units (2. in 2022.)600 million units).
This year, these two data of the smart home industry not only maintained the previous growth trend. According to professional institutions**, the size of the smart home market may exceed 11 trillion yuan. Such a trillion-level super market, not only has a large variety of products, there are many players, but also with the expansion of intelligent technology, many manufacturers and Internet manufacturers have also poured in.
Smart home contains a wide range of products, as long as the home device can be connected through the Internet of Things technology, it is considered to be within the scope of smart home. With the development of Internet technology, many traditional home appliances have also been transformed into smart homes, such as TVs, air conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators, etc.
In the stage of the rise and development of some smart home devices, they have caught up with the trend of smart home development and belong to the "new forces" in smart homes, such as sweeping robots, smart door locks, projectors, smart cameras, etc. Let's select some representatives of "traditional" home appliances and "new forces" smart home to understand the development of this year's smart home industry.
TV. According to the research data of third-party institutions,The retail volume of China's color TV market in the third quarter of this year was6.95 million units,A year-on-year decrease of 14.7%, but the interesting thing is that the scale of retail sales reached 24 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12% growth.
This also means that although the color TV market is declining in shipments,But consumers are more willing to pay for the experience。
In fact, it can be seen from Xiaomi、TCL、Hisense、The products launched by the head TV manufacturers of Skyworth,This year, the TV market is still developing towards a large screen,75Inch、98Inch TVs are constantly updated,And** is returning to normal prices more and more。
On the other hand,High-end display technology is also gradually popular,For example, 100-level partition mini LED、1,000-level partition mini LED emerged in the color TV market in the second half of this year。
In addition, it is worth mentioning that in addition to Sony, foreign brands Samsung and Philips are still famous, but their market share has long been reduced to others. And the leading domestic brands,TCL and Hisense have been working hard to make a breakthrough in the high-end market,Although Xiaomi also has a signal to march towards the high-end market,But the market still relies on cost performance。
Projector. In the first two years, with the rise of the camping trend, the product category of projectors has also been driven, and projector shipments will still be growing in 2022, exceeding 6 million units.
However, according to statistics in the first half of 2023, smart projection shipments are 34010,000, a year-on-year decrease of 75%；In the second half of the year, the Double 11** Festival, the online retail channel of smart projection also exceeded 10% of the decline. Therefore, the decline of domestic intelligent projection is basically a foregone conclusion.
The growth of the market is sluggish,The result is that intelligent projection manufacturers continue to roll up technology and products。 For example, this year's smart projection market,XGIMI and nuts live debate technical route is a good example。 It's just that the live broadcast dialogue between the two sides has somewhat deviated from the original intention, although it has attracted more people's attention, but both sides are disgraceful.
At present, the intelligent projection industry is mainly divided into two technical routes: DLP and LCD. But for consumers,It doesn't matter what kind of technical route the projector takes,What matters is what are the reasons for buying a projector。
Although the use of projectors is more abundant, the projectors at the current price of more than 1,000 yuan are basically 1080P resolution, and consumers urgently need more4K projectors to meet the needs of higher quality projection entertainment life. It is expected that the projector market will usher in a new wave of technology iteration with the maturity of technology, and more 4K projectors will be popularized.
Household floor cleaning.
The household cleaning part can be roughly divided into two main categories: sweeping robots and floor scrubbers.
First of all, the sweeping robot industry has undergone several technical upgrades,Now the functions of sweeping robots are becoming more and more homogeneous,They are all focused on hands-free,Automatic sweeping、Mopping、Drying mopping、Automatic dust collection,Even provide automatic loading and unloading。 However, with the upgrading of technology,Now the price of sweeping robots has also come to a high level,Usually the ** of a flagship sweeper has come to the price of more than 4000 yuan。
The reason why sweeping robot manufacturers are competing for each other in the high-end market is mainly because the sweeping robot market is also in a state of sluggish growth. According to the data of Aowei Cloud Network, the sales volume of sweeping robots in the first half of 2023 will reach 1.45 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 539%, sales of about 4.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 366%。
In terms of market competition, Ecovacs, Roborock, and Xiaomi are still the leading brands in the sweeping robot industry, but emerging manufacturers, Dreame and Cloud Whale are close behind, and they can take over the users lost by the head manufacturers at any time.
The recession of the sweeping robot market has also forced manufacturers to open up a new track, that is, floor scrubbers.
According to the data of Aowei Cloud Network, the year-on-year growth rate of floor scrubbers in the first half of 2023 will reach 309%, retail sales reached about 54500 million yuan, although the growth rate slowed down compared with the same period last year, but still continued to grow at a high speed. The current market pattern of floor scrubbers is mainly divided into Dreame, Ecovacs, Stone and other sweeping robot manufacturers, Mach, a brand focusing on floor scrubbers, and some old home appliance companies.
From the perspective of product categories, there is still a lot of room for the development of floor scrubbers, and it does not conflict with products such as sweeping robots, it pays more attention to solving deep stains and garbage, but it is more complementary to sweeping robots. Interestingly, the market changes of floor scrubbers and sweeping robots are also reversed, from the initial five or six thousand yuan to the current more than two thousand yuan, the first floor scrubber has been declining, which has also led to the expansion of the market.
Smart speakers. In the years of rapid development of smart home,Smart speakers were once regarded as the entrance to smart homes,Alibaba's tmall elf、Xiaodu speaker and Xiaomi's Xiaoai classmates have relied on subsidies to enter the market,Rapid popularization occupies many families。
Nowadays, smart speakers are no longer a must-have for controlling smart homes, and smart speakers have not been able to show absolute advantages in controlling smart homes. According to the data of Aowei cloud network, since 2020, the shipment of smart speakers has deteriorated, and in 2022, the shipment of smart speakers has dropped to about 24 million units.
In the first quarter of 2023, China's smart speaker market demand is still in a state of decline, with its sales volume of 5.24 million units, a year-on-year decrease of about 252%。
The decline in sales of smart speakers actually indicates that the strength of the Internet camp represented by Alibaba and the expectation of cutting into the smart home market from smart speakers is gradually weakening.
Smart home is divided.
Although the influence of Internet manufacturers represented by Alibaba in the smart home industry is weakening, there are many industries involved in smart home, and there are still four traditional home appliance manufacturers on the market - Hisense, Midea, Haier, Gree, and two upstarts - Huawei, Xiaomi.
Hisense. Hisense's layout in the smart home industry,Basically, it continues"One screen、Three domains、All formats"The smart new life strategy,In terms of products, it relies more and more on artificial intelligence、Internet of Things and other technologies,Create smart home solutions,Such as hall、living room、Kitchen、Bedroom、Balcony and other smart scenes。
On the consumer side,Hisense AijiaappIt has been upgraded many times this year,It has realized the interconnection of TV、Air conditioner and other smart home appliances in the whole house,Covering more brands and smart devices in the ecosystem。
In addition, the high-end bright set that supports Hisense's smart home strategy,In the first half of this year, sales increased year-on-year to 310%,It has entered more than 250,000 families。
Beautiful. In the field of smart home, Midea actually adheres to the strategy of "making more friends and fewer enemies".
From the initial cooperation with Xiaomi, to Huawei, Alibaba and many other partners, Midea was not in a hurry to build its own ecosystem, but preferred to rely on large platforms to focus more on products.
However, at the first Midea "Visionary Conference" held in October this year, Midea announced the "Midea Home Brain" for the first time, equipped with the AI large model "Meiyan". Although this is suspected of following the concept of AI large models to a certain extent, this is indeed the first AI large model in the field of smart home in China, and it has the capabilities of intelligent perception, natural interaction, and independent decision-making.
Although Midea is always classified as a traditional home appliance manufacturer, it has always been able to keep up with the development of home furnishings in terms of products and strategies.
Haier. After the rise of the smart home concept, Haier soon launched the smart home scene brand Three-winged Bird. At the beginning of this year, Haier opened the No. 001 store of the Three-winged Bird Guangzhou Experience Center, which is Haier's first 40 Smart Home Experience Center.
4.Version 0 of the smart home experience center has built a "1+3+5+n" scenario solution. Among them, with "1" smart home brain as the core, 3 professional system solutions and 5 smart spaces including the whole house intelligent system, the whole house water system and the whole house air system are created to realize the customization of N smart scenes.
In the smart home solution of Three-winged Bird, through the smart home brain, all kinds of single products can actively perceive the user status and actively understand the user's needs. In 2023, Haier Three-winged Bird is expected to cover 304 cities and lay out 3300+ smart life experience halls, which will intuitively allow users to feel the smart life experience of Three-winged Bird.
Gree. Gree is the most concerned brand among traditional home appliance manufacturers, but this is often not because of how good its products are, but because of the controversy caused by Internet celebrity IP figures such as "Dong Mingzhu", "Meng Yutong" and "Wang Ziru".
In the field of smart home, Gree has also made a lot of efforts, such as the launch of IoT platform, intelligent decision-making system, G-Voice voice interaction system, intelligent vision system, G-OS IoT operating system, G-Learning comfort and energy-saving algorithm and other intelligent IoT technologies. Even Gree has launched its own brand of smart phones to access the Gree + smart home ecology, which can be conveniently linked with Gree smart home devices to achieve some personalized customized smart scenes.
At present, Gree mainly promotes Gree's zero-carbon healthy home, through the five management systems of energy, air, health, security and light, to achieve intelligent emission reduction and create an energy-saving, environmentally friendly, comfortable and healthy living experience.
From the performance point of view, in the first half of this year, Gree Electric's air conditioning business accounted for more than seventy percent of revenue, and Gree in the air conditioning industry is still very strong, but in addition to air conditioning, other businesses seem to be performing average. However, fortunately, Gree's revenue in the first three quarters of this year increased by 5% year-on-year, and net profit also increased by 9% year-on-year8%。
Huawei. In May this year, Huawei released the whole home smart 40, and only half a year later, Huawei has brought a new whole house smart 50。And Huawei Whole Home Smart 50 brings smart switch Mondrian, smart mini pro, HarmonyOS new UX interface, Sky Sound ** light, universal wisdom point and other products.
Stable connectivity is the key to whole-home intelligence, and Huawei's whole-home intelligent solution is the first to create a PLC home connection, which shares a single power line for power and signals, and has a connection stability rate of up to 9999%。In addition, Huawei's whole-home intelligence has also pioneered the PLC intelligent host, which serves as a reliable central brain of the home, which can realize localized computing for the scheduling of devices in the whole family, and even if the network is disconnected, the whole family is still stable and controllable.
Huawei's whole-home intelligence can also provide users with self-diagnosis and self-repair of whole-house devices through the smart life app, and Huawei has also built 190 authorized experience stores and 138 Huawei smart life halls.
At present, after several years of development, Huawei has relied on the rich HarmonyOS Zhilian ecosystem and improved the experience of the whole house intelligent subsystem, which has become the decoration choice of many first-line consumers.
Millet. Mijia ecology can be described as one of Xiaomi's moats, in the early stage of smart home development, through investment and shares, Xiaomi has driven many smart home equipment manufacturers. With the help of the vast user base of Xiaomi mobile phones, Xiaomi has also supported many manufacturers to become giants in vertical industries, and the Mijia ecosystem has become the most complete smart home ecology on the market.
Xiaomi's financial report for the third quarter of 2023 shows that the Mijia ecosystem is still very strong, and the number of connected IoT devices on the AIoT platform has reached 69.9 billion, a year-on-year increase of 252%, the number of monthly active users of the Mi Home app reached 84 million, while the revenue of IoT and consumer products reached 20.7 billion yuan, and the gross profit margin reached a record high of 178%。
However, for the Mi Home ecosystem, the most important thing in 2023 is the release of Xiaomi Surging OS.
The surging OS is Xiaomi's operating system for creating a full ecosystem of people, cars and homes, which will further strengthen the connection between Xiaomi mobile phones, Xiaomi cars and Mijia ecological products, and realize cross-terminal intelligent connection and active intelligence experience. The first batch of AIoT devices have begun to push the official version of Xiaomi Surging OS one after another, with the popularization of old models and the addition of new products, the Mijia ecology with Surging OS as the core is believed to reach a new threshold in terms of intelligent experience.
The Matter standard builds an invisible bridge, and generative AI disrupts the smart home.
At the end of 2022, Matter 1The 0 standard was officially released, and the product certification service was also opened simultaneously, which is the most important thing for the entire smart home industry ecology. The emergence of Mateer has brought the entire smart home ecosystem to a unified approach.
1. Hope for openness.
In May of this year, Matter 1Release 1 of the release, which focuses on support for battery-powered devices and upgraded test automation to make it easier for device manufacturers to pre-qualify and certify their products faster.
In October of this year, Matter 1Version 2 was released, which further expanded the types of supported devices, including washing machines, refrigerators, robot vacuums, air quality sensors, air conditioners, and other devices.
Nowadays, the Matter protocol standard has been accepted by many terminal equipment manufacturers, including international giants such as Amazon, Apple, Google, and Samsung, as well as many domestic smart home manufacturers. According to Musa, the former chairman of the CSA Alliance, China is already a very important part of the Matter ecosystem, with 60% of the more than 1,800 certified products and software components coming from Chinese members.
Smart home requires devices and ecosystems to work together, and the promotion and development of the Matter protocol standard is believed to become an invisible bridge and gradually become the choice of more smart home companies, and Matter will become the largest ecological base in the smart home market.
This year, generative AI represented by ChatGPT can be said to be popular all over the world, and many domestic companies have begun to invest a lot of manpower and material resources to build generative AI. In addition to what we can usually experience, generative AI brings functions such as drawing and querying information data, in fact, the application of generative AI technology in smart homes is also very exciting.
At the current stage, the interaction of smart home mainly requires users to take the initiative to issue commands, such as through voice dialogue or mobile phone APP operation, and smart home often only has a single device response.
The addition of generative AI technology will enable smart home devices to have the ability to learn, learn the habits of users, and actively perceive the user's state, reducing the process of users actively sending instructions, and the device can also achieve linkage experience.
For example, Xiaomi's latest release of the surging OS is to bring Hypermind to be responsible for the active intelligence section, which can obtain the environment, vision, hearing, behavior and other perception capabilities through the device, gradually learn the user's habits and preferences, and then realize active intelligence, and automatically execute the functions of smart home devices.
It is believed that not only Xiaomi, but also other domestic smart home equipment manufacturers will also invest heavily in generative AI technology, promoting the traditional imperative interaction of smart home to active understanding interaction.
Summary. Although the general environment has not been good in the past few years, smart homes are still booming. Nowadays, with the development of communication technology, AI, chip computing power and industry protocol standards, the industry is becoming more and more standardized and intelligent.
The future of smart home will inevitably move towards a more unified ecology, and it is believed that with the upgrade of single products towards the experience of multi-scene autonomous linkage, the smart home market will be further opened. In 2024, let's wait and see.