The 2026 618 promotion has just begun, and the smart home category is far more lively than in previous years.
From the all-scenario AI shopping festival to the launch of over a thousand AI home appliances, from the first national supplement category covering smart door locks, sweeping robots, to the intensive launch of one-stop renewal solutions for a range of home appliances – whole-house intelligence is changing from a “future concept” to a real choice for consumers to actively search and place orders in batches.
So why will whole-house intelligence explode this year?
1. From “single product intelligence” to “spatial cognition”
The latest forecast released by the China Home Appliances Service and Maintenance Association shows that the market size of the whole-house intelligent system will reach 280 billion yuan in 2026, with a penetration rate exceeding 35%. The industry is moving from “single product intelligence” to “spatial cognition”, becoming the core carrier of home intelligence.
The entire Chinese smart home market has exceeded 800 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35%, officially moving from “single product intelligence” to the deep water area of “active service”.
More importantly, consumption cognition has undergone fundamental changes.
“Whole-house intelligence” is replacing “single product intelligence” as a new consumer fashion.
Data show that the consumption of home appliances across the entire network shows a clear trend of youthfulness, with consumers under the age of 35 accounting for nearly 60%, while the 26 to 35-year-old group accounts for nearly 50% of smart home consumption.
This group of major consumers who have grown up in the digital age are no longer satisfied with purchasing smart sockets and smart light bulbs one by one, but pursue the overall experience of “smartness upon arrival” in one step.
2. Resonance of multiple forces
The outbreak of whole-house intelligence is not an accident, but the result of the joint efforts of the policy side and the industry side.
At the policy level, the trade-in national subsidy policy will complete a new round of expansion in 2026, adding 10 smart home and artificial intelligence terminal categories such as smart service robots, smart door locks, and smart water purifiers. Consumers can directly enjoy a national subsidy deduction of up to 1,500 yuan, which can be used in conjunction with the 618 platform discounts.
Local governments have also actively followed up: Shenzhen issued the “Action Plan on Accelerating the Promotion and Industrial Development of Whole-House Intelligent Applications (2026-2028)” as early as the beginning of the year, proposing 18 specific measures from technological research, industrial momentum to multi-scenario applications, and drawing a clear “roadmap” for the development of whole-house intelligence.
At the industrial level, the ecological barriers to whole-house intelligence are collapsing.
The comprehensive popularity of the Matter protocol and the commercial implementation of domestic starlight technology have broken the compatibility problem between different brands of equipment – brand A speakers can control brand B air conditioners.
Whole-house intelligence is moving out of the siled era of “brands operating independently” and accelerating its evolution towards seamless cross-brand interconnection.
3. Qualitative changes in technological change
If the “intelligence” of whole-house intelligence in the past few years was more limited to the shallow interaction of “voice remote control to turn on and off lights”, then the technology base in 2026 has achieved a qualitative leap.
Spatial sensing technology represented by millimeter wave radar is being fully commercialized.
Through technical means such as millimeter wave radar, we can understand and reproduce the model of the real space in real time, and accurately identify complex needs in multi-person scenarios.
Various brands have launched air-conditioning products equipped with millimeter-wave radar human-sensing technology, which achieves highly sensitive recognition of human body position and posture – allowing the wind to actively follow people, instead of people passively adapting to the wind.
More importantly, this type of sensor has the advantage of natural privacy protection. It can complete spatial perception without a camera, and is especially suitable for private places such as bedrooms and bathrooms.
The development of whole-house intelligence is leaping from “device interconnection” to “spatial intelligence”. The core logic lies in the AI large model giving space a complete closed-loop capability of “perception-decision-execution”.
The system no longer passively waits for instructions, but begins to “understand” people’s needs, allowing smart homes to truly bid farewell to “pseudo-intelligence” and realize active services where “technology is invisible.”
IV. Summary
As a 2 trillion market, the annual consumption of home appliances is concentrated at the two major promotion nodes of “618” and “Double Eleven”.
On June 18 this year, whole-house intelligence has changed from “optional” to “required”.
These platform-level promotions combined with national subsidy discounts have significantly lowered the price threshold for the entire whole-house smart solution.
Smart systems that originally cost tens of thousands of yuan are now available to some consumers through a complete preferential chain of “list price – store coupons – full discount – national subsidy” for a few thousand yuan to obtain a cross-brand, full-scenario smart home decoration experience.
It is this dual driving force of “mature technology + affordable price” that makes whole-house intelligence truly enter the homes of ordinary people this year.
