In today’s era of AI smart bodies and “universal AI”, the smart home industry, which starts with the word “smart”, is an area where smart “body sensing” is relatively weak.
Consumers bought various smart home devices featuring “AI” with great expectations, but in the end they found that they could only “talk” rather than “become smarter”.
Our ideal smart home may be to have an all-around butler like “Jarvis” in the movie, but in the end, it is trapped in the inconsistent standards of various smart home products and the non-interoperability of information. The devices have become “information islands”. Although AI technology has been built into them, it is useless and has no active service capabilities. Users are still required to “give orders” one by one and respond passively.
Recently, “Lobster (OpenClaw)” has been popular on the screen. It can help you work in one sentence, but the “lobster” in the field of smart home has not yet arrived.
Big models of AI are highly hyped, which has infinitely raised the public’s expectations for “intelligence.” However, due to the fragmentation of underlying connection standards, lack of multi-modal perception, computing power bottlenecks, and cost balance, the ideal “full-scenario active intelligence” has always been difficult to implement.
Besides the technology carnival, we see that the smart home industry has massive fragmented scenarios, numerous players, complex needs, and a desire for AI empowerment. What manufacturers need is a solution that can truly open up the “Ren and Du” from the bottom of software and hardware.
Against this industry background, Quectel, the world’s leading IoT overall solution provider, recently demonstrated its solutions across multiple AI subdivisions such as embodied intelligence, agents, and AI development platforms, including multiple solutions covering end-side, IoT platforms, models, and integrated software and hardware.
The integration of AI and smart home industry is not a single point, but a comprehensive and multi-dimensional system engineering. Only by accurately grasping the core pain points can we truly prescribe useful “prescriptions”.
In Sun Yanming’s view, the opportunities that AI brings to the industry are very prominent, mainly in the qualitative change of experience, the reconstruction of scenes and the unification of standards.
For consumers, the “qualitative change” in experience from passive connection and control to active intelligence has a strong perception. AI-based smart home products can better understand users and provide predictions and proactive services based on user habits.
The reconstruction of scene value from single-point intelligence to scene intelligence is also a very important opportunity.
For example, in the field of elderly care and health, with the addition of AI, “AI x data” can bring a lot of imagination, and medical staff can monitor and provide early warning through AI algorithm models; for example, in industrial scenarios, with the support of AI models, power grid and weather data can be combined for refined energy-saving management.
Of course, opportunities come with challenges.
It is good to upgrade the experience, but how to achieve a balance between cost and experience, and how to achieve it in a model that is truly acceptable to users and a viable business model, are all issues that manufacturers must face head-on.
At the same time, user expectation management, data privacy and security risks, the unification of ecological standard protocols and the improvement of adaptation are all issues facing us.
Traditional smart home solutions often focus on “single point” breakthroughs, solving a certain problem of a certain device. It is difficult to solve real pain points, cannot link devices, and cannot truly allow AI to actively serve users.
However, the ecological islands in the field of smart home are seriously fragmented. Each brand has its own ecosystem, and the connection standards are complex and diverse. It can be said to be a “seven countries and eight systems”, and the experience is very poor.
From a commercialization perspective, difficulties in implementation and integration are also prominent. Companies in the industry have complex and highly differentiated needs, making it difficult to form an overall solution.
Overall, the biggest feature of Quectel’s layout in the AI field is to provide an overall AI solution with end-cloud collaboration and software and hardware integration, rather than a single point product. This is also one of the most significant breakthrough points compared to traditional solutions.
For example, its offline voice interaction solution can flexibly connect to various devices such as screens, cameras, motors, and sensors at the hardware level; at the software level, the device is equipped with self-developed audio and video algorithms, relying on the Internet of Things platform and large-scale model Agent to build a complete device-cloud collaboration solution.
In addition, the solution can be deeply customized according to the customer’s specific application scenarios, and has good flexibility and scalability.
What Quectel does is integrate AI into the overall solution. It has many hardware platforms and works closely with upstream chip manufacturers to provide targeted solutions as soon as possible.
In the field of Matter, its solutions are also not single-point modules or single-point hardware. In Sun Yanming’s view, single-point modules, equipment or certification methods cannot solve the core needs of many customers for interconnection. Quectel’s solution includes a complete chain from modules and integrated solutions to certification and production.
Taking the representative KGM133S module as an example, it supports Matter, Matter over Thread, BLE 6.0, ZigBee multiple protocols, and centimeter-level Channel Sounding functions; the newly released SDC041P
The UWB human-sensing radar solution can support ranging, angle measurement, positioning, human presence monitoring, and sleep monitoring. When it comes to specific products, Quectel cooperates with head air conditioner manufacturers to realize functions such as human body sensing in air conditioners and intelligent control of wind direction and wind, allowing the wind to truly learn to “actively think” and change according to needs.
Quectel Communications is firmly optimistic about the integration of AI and smart home. In the future, smart devices will definitely develop iteratively in the direction of “understanding you better and making you worry less”.
Quectel’s layout in the AI field is a long-term plan rather than blindly following the trend.
The release of a series of products and solutions is a concentrated realization of Quectel’s long-term technology accumulation. This is why Quectel can quickly transform long-term technology accumulation into actual products and technologies to empower the industry when it comes to nodes that explode on the AI terminal side.
The rich and comprehensive product technology portfolio and the integrated software and hardware support service capabilities are one of its core advantages that distinguish it from its competitors.
For example, in terms of communications, from 2G to 5G, to Bluetooth, WiFi, and Matter, Quectel’s module solutions and algorithms are covered, and it will even help customers design antenna solutions.
Today, with the demand for AI interaction and the explosion of data volume, the communication of smart devices involving large amounts of data requires the support of these underlying technologies.
The benefits brought by the wide coverage of product technology are obvious. They will not be restricted by a single technology when designing solutions, and they are not dependent on third-party manufacturers. They can also select or recommend better technology combinations based on customer needs, taking into account performance and cost-effectiveness.
Secondly, it is the ability to deeply integrate technology and scenarios, that is, Know-How of a large number of industries and supply chain advantages.
Over the years, Quectel has been connecting with a large number of customers on the front line for a long time, with more than 7,000 mass production customers. Their goal is to “understand users best and understand their needs best.”
At the same time, they work closely with upstream manufacturers and are the core partners of most core device suppliers. This allows Quectel to do in-depth customization with these leading manufacturers and do forward-looking technology and product layout planning.
In terms of supply chain, Quectel’s annual shipments are “hundreds of millions”. The huge shipments and R&D investment bring excellent cost control and engineering optimization capabilities. They can pass on this supply chain advantage to customers.
In terms of establishing a global service system, Quectel also has a solid layout and is capable of helping customers go overseas, covering everything from product design to processing.
In terms of ecological collaboration, Quectel currently cooperates with global mainstream technology platforms and many leading manufacturers. The areas of cooperation span hardware, software, algorithms and ecology.
In domestic and foreign markets, its representative major appliance customers include leading domestic brands and internationally renowned home appliance companies.
As of the middle of last year, the number of Matter certifications it had done in the CSA Alliance ranked among the top in the world. This ecological layout is conducive to customers going overseas or developing cross-categories.
The achievement of these above-mentioned advantages is inseparable from Quectel’s continuous layout and firm R&D investment in related fields over the years.
In the fields related to AI technology, its team has invested heavily in the layout of AI very early on, from the terminal side, the Internet of Things platform side to large models.
On the client side, Quectel has self-developed audio, video and multi-modal algorithms. The client-side solution can provide small to large computing power, various computing power configuration modules or hardware development platforms; on the IoT platform side, they can provide SaaS, PaaS, device management platforms, and App agent customization.
As Sun Yanming said, from the terminal side to the IoT platform, if there was no early layout, it would be impossible to form today’s large-scale solutions and shipments.
In the field of large models, Quectel actively completes docking and debugging with mainstream cutting-edge large models as soon as possible, and applies them in client-side and cloud-side modeling solutions.
It is understood that Quectel is one of the first domestic solution providers in the smart home field to connect with Doubao, Qianwen and DeepSeek.
In terms of R&D investment, Quectel has more than 6,100 R&D technicians, accounting for nearly 70%. It has established 8 R&D centers around the world, covering China, North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region; according to the annual report just released last week, Quectel’s R&D investment has reached 1.951 billion yuan in 2025, accounting for 8.02% of revenue. It currently has more than 1,100 various patents and software copyrights, many of which are core patents.
With the rapid development of AI, the smart home market is brewing new changes.
Device-side AI will continue to be an important development direction. AI localization is accelerating, response is faster, and data security requirements are stricter; multi-modality is quickly integrated, AI predicts behavioral habits more accurately, and serves people more proactively and intelligently; AI’s ability to interact with the physical world is strengthened, moving from the home to industry, education, medical care, finance, and other scenarios.
Along with these changes comes the reconstruction of business models, from hardware sales to various AI subscription scenario-based services and high-end development. New business models continue to sprout. The consumption model changes from single purchase to full life cycle payment. Former competitors may become cooperative or symbiotic relationships, and the industry landscape is quietly changing.
In today’s era of deep integration of AI and the Internet of Things, Quectel has already shed its inherent label of being a single “communication module manufacturer”.
From hardware solutions to model algorithms, from protocol interconnection to ecological collaboration, from the terminal side to the IoT platform side, coupled with a highly resilient global delivery system, Quectel is becoming the “super pavement” in the smart home field in the new AI era.
