On June 1, 2026, Huawei simultaneously launched a new generation of Hongmeng Smart Home at the nova16 series launch conference – the core selling point is “full ecological AI evolution.”
This is not an ordinary smart home product line update. Huawei is trying to install a “central nervous system” for the house.
Looking back at the development history of smart homes, it can be roughly divided into four stages.
The first stage (2014-2017) is the era of connectivity. The core experience is “the mobile phone acts as a remote control”, but the operating experience is not good.
The second stage (2017-2020) is the voice era, where voice control becomes mainstream, but voice assistants lack context understanding.
The third stage (2020-2024) is the era of scene linkage. Multiple devices operate simultaneously according to preset scenes, but the scenes cannot adapt to environmental changes.
The fourth stage (2025 to present) is the era of AI active intelligence. The combination of large language models and spatial perception technology enables smart homes to move from “passive response to instructions” to “active perception and prediction.” Huawei Hongmeng Smart Home 2026 version is the representative product of this stage.
The core technology of Huawei’s new generation of Hongmeng Smart Home is a three-layer AI architecture.
The first layer is the end-side sensing layer (Always-on Sensing), which consists of millimeter wave radar, infrared sensors, ambient light sensors and microphone arrays distributed throughout the house.
Millimeter-wave radar is the key. It can sense the presence, position, posture and micro-movements of people without collecting visual images, and is less intrusive to privacy.
Huawei has adopted a higher-precision 60GHz millimeter wave solution this time, and the spatial resolution has been increased from about 15cm in the 2025 version to about 5cm.
The second layer is the edge AI inference layer (Edge AI Engine). After the sensing data is aggregated to the home smart host, a local lightweight AI model is responsible for real-time inference.
Its core capabilities include scene intent understanding, environment adaptive optimization, and anomaly detection.
The third layer is the cloud large model layer (Cloud AI). Tasks that require complex reasoning and long-term learning are uploaded to the cloud Pangu large model for processing, and is also responsible for cross-device data fusion.
Only by allowing technology to return to life scenes can we understand the value of “active intelligence”.
In the morning wake-up scene, the system detects that the user has entered light sleep from deep sleep, and will gradually brighten the lights, start soft background music, and automatically adjust the air conditioning temperature during the optimal wake-up window 15 minutes before the preset alarm clock.
If the user’s sleep quality is poor, the system will delay waking up for 15 minutes.
In the energy-saving scenario of leaving home, the system will analyze factors such as outdoor temperature and time to return home to decide whether to completely turn off the air conditioner or switch to low-power maintenance mode. Compared with the simple “home/leave home” linkage, it can save an additional 18% of air-conditioning energy consumption.
In home security scenarios, millimeter-wave radar continuously monitors the distribution of people in the house. If it is detected that an elderly person living alone has not come out of the bedroom for more than the preset time, the system will first confirm the situation through the voice of the smart speaker. If there is no response, it will automatically send a notification to the emergency contact.
According to Huawei’s 2025 annual report and 2026 Q1 press conference data, as of Q1 2026, the number of access devices in the Hongmeng Smart Home ecosystem has exceeded 21 million, supporting more than 950 smart device categories. It has completed Hongmeng Smart Connect certification with more than 400 home appliance brands. In 2025, Hongmeng Smart Home host shipments will be approximately 3.8 million units, a year-on-year increase of approximately 65%.
The scale effect allows more devices to be connected to bring richer data input, train better AI models, and attract more users and developers.
Compared with other whole-house smart solutions on the market, Huawei Hongmeng Smart Home has unique advantages.
Compared with Xiaomi Mijia, there is a gap in Xiaomi’s AI capabilities, especially large model capabilities. Mijia automation is still rule-driven.
Compared with Apple HomeKit, Apple has a closed ecosystem and is more conservative in terms of device compatibility and AI functions.
Compared with Amazon Alexa, Alexa is almost unavailable in the Chinese market due to service restrictions.
Huawei’s differentiated advantage lies in its full-stack capabilities of its own chips, its own operating systems and its own large-scale AI models. Its “device-edge-cloud” trinity technology stack is difficult to copy by other manufacturers.
The real ambition of Huawei Hongmeng Smart Home lies in “local intelligence”, which brings AI reasoning from the cloud to home smart hosts.
Although the 3B parameter distillation model is not as powerful as the large cloud model, it can cover more than 90% of daily smart home scenarios, and the response delay is shortened from seconds to milliseconds, and it can work without a network connection.
While the entire industry is still competing for the parameters of large models, Huawei is pursuing the speed, stability, and power saving of small models. This strategic choice may define the technical route of smart homes from 2026 to 2030.
Huawei Hongmeng Smart Home’s “active intelligence” route is triggering strategic adjustments in the entire smart home industry.
Xiaomi will announce the “Xiaomi Brain” plan in Q1 of 2026, with the goal of achieving preliminary active scene sensing capabilities in Q4 of 2026.
Apple is expected to announce a major update to HomeKit at WWDC 2026, introducing active scenario prediction based on Apple Intelligence.
Amazon’s Alexa team injects large language models into the voice assistant, upgrading it into a “conversational home butler.”
It is foreseeable that 2026-2028 will be the decisive period for the smart home industry to transition from “manual intelligence” to “active intelligence”. Whoever can make users feel that “the home will take care of themselves” will be able to lock in the smart home entrance for the next decade.
