Recently, the national and local governments have intensively introduced a series of policies, on the one hand, to encourage the upgrading of the household appliance industry, especially for smart kitchen, health bathroom, old-age care and other life scenarios, to achieve technological innovation and product upgrading around consumer health needs; On the other hand, it guides consumers to actively "trade in the old for the new", plays the role of fiscal and tax policies and consumer finance, and stimulates the market demand for green smart appliances.
New technology promotes the intelligent development of household appliances
With the integration and development of AI, Internet of Things and other technologies, the development of household appliances intelligence has been greatly promoted.
The introduction of AI large model enables home appliances to accurately identify the current use scenarios and provide services for users according to their specific needs. For example, the Siemens Smart Puzzle AI Oven displayed at the 2024 China Home Appliances and Consumer Electronics Expo is equipped with the industry's exclusive high temperature resistant AI smart eye technology, which can accurately capture food color changes, independently monitor the baking process, and identify more than 40 kinds of food ingredients.
The Internet of Things can form a smart home combination with the corresponding platform by connecting a single home appliance in series. For example, BOE has launched an intelligent IoT solution, which includes lamps and electrical appliances, intelligent door locks, etc. Users can set different scenarios, such as automatically turning on the curtain lights when getting up, automatically turning on the air conditioner before getting home from work, and remotely controlling household appliances through mobile phones to achieve energy consumption management.
Smart home appliance consumption boom
According to the data of Ovi Cloud (AVC), a big data service provider in the smart home field, in the first quarter of 2024, the proportion of smart home appliances in all categories of home appliances has further deepened. For example, in the color wire market, the retail sales of AI products accounted for 92.46%, up 6.56% year on year; In the online refrigerator market, the retail sales of intelligent products also accounted for 42.18%, up 8.78% year on year.
In addition, the implementation of the old for new policy is also helping residents to upgrade their old appliances intelligently. According to the data of Jingdong Appliance, the consumption of 3C household appliances during the May Day holiday is dominated by the consumption of residents' new lifestyle and the "new" consumption brought by the trade in. Among them, the proportion of the sales contribution of "renewal" brought by the replacement of old appliances has doubled, and the first level energy efficient air conditioners, large capacity refrigerators, washing and drying sets of "washing machines+dryers", as well as intelligent quality appliances such as dishwashers and sweeping robots have ushered in "renewal"; Smart home grew by more than 220% year on year.
AI creates a smart base for smart appliances
How to improve the practicability and stability of products is the current optimization direction of smart home appliances. From the perspective of operators, in the specific implementation process, work should be carried out from the following two aspects.
The first is to better use the AI enabled smart home appliances developed by operators. In short, AI implantation can not only make suggestions, deployments and decisions, but also realize voice semantic recognition, which can free users' hands and provide a real butler experience. At the same time, AI also has the ability to avoid risks, which can judge the use of household appliances and give early warning in time.
The second is to further strengthen the intelligent computing capability of the cloud network. Cloud network intelligent computing capability is the technology base of smart home. Operators should build an efficient and stable cloud computing platform, enable home appliances with cloud network integration, provide strong computing power, and support large model training, daily instruction discrimination and other work. At the recent press conference of China Telecom's AI+product upgrade plan, China Telecom's "Wonderful Home" system was officially released. This is the R&D achievement of China Telecom based on cloud network integration capability base and digital home platform base. It focuses on users' needs and provides a variety of smart home services.
