The smart home industry is ushering in a new stage of development, moving from single-product intelligence to active services. The global market is showing a dual-driven and diversified competition.
Smart home is based on residences and comprehensively utilizes technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence to enable home equipment to have functions such as centralized management, remote control, interconnection, and independent learning. It realizes the organic integration of home environment management, security and defense, information exchange, consumer services, audio-visual entertainment, and home life, creating a convenient, comfortable, healthy, safe, and environmentally friendly family living environment.
The development of smart homes can be traced back to the 1980s and has gone through four stages so far.
Before 2000, it was in its infancy, and automatic control technology was not yet mature. Automation products could only implement simple sensor switches with limited application scope; 2000 to 2013 was the single-product intelligence stage, and the intelligence of home products was reflected in the diversification of operating methods and limited response to user needs; 2014 to 2019 was the product interconnection stage, with the help of Wi-
Communication protocols such as Fi, Bluetooth, and Zigbee realize device collaboration and centralized management, but there are still barriers to cross-brand interconnection. From 2019 to the present, it is the whole-house intelligence stage. Through machine learning and deep learning algorithms, smart home integration from a single smart home appliance to the kitchen, balcony, living room, etc. has been realized. Users can customize the device dashboard to coordinate home devices.
What is particularly critical is that with the breakthrough development of generative AI in 2022, it can deeply learn user behavior patterns and independently formulate personalized scene strategies, pushing smart homes into a new stage of “active intelligence”.
With the continuous iteration of technology and the continuous upgrading of development stages, the functions of smart homes are increasingly perfected, the experience continues to be optimized, and its core advantages are gradually highlighted.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, with the continuous advancement of science and technology and the improvement of people’s living standards, smart homes have become more and more popular among consumers for their convenience, efficiency, and comfort, and the market size has also grown rapidly.
Data shows that from 2020 to 2024, the global smart home market will grow from US$78 billion to US$154.3 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of 18.60% during the period.
It is expected that by 2030, the global smart home market will reach US$269.2 billion.
Focusing on the domestic market, driven by the dual promotion of the “artificial intelligence +” action and the “old-for-new” policy for home appliances, my country’s smart home market has grown strongly.
From 2020 to 2024, the size of my country’s smart home market will grow from 514.47 billion yuan to 876.74 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 14.27% during the period.
It is estimated that my country’s smart home market will reach 945 billion yuan in 2025.
Artificial intelligence is an important engine for the development of new productivity.
In November 2025, the State Council issued the “Opinions on In-depth Implementation of the “Artificial Intelligence +” Action, which clarified the overall requirements for the systematic promotion of “Artificial Intelligence +” and promoted the extensive and deep integration of artificial intelligence with various industries and fields of the economy and society in three stages: 2027, 2030, and 2035, and systematically laid out the six key actions and eight basic supporting capabilities of “Artificial Intelligence +”.
Among them, in the improvement of “artificial intelligence +” consumption, the “Opinions” propose to promote the “intelligent connection of everything” in intelligent terminals, cultivate an intelligent product ecosystem, vigorously develop new generation intelligent terminals such as intelligent connected cars, artificial intelligence mobile phones and computers, intelligent robots, smart homes, and smart wearables, create an integrated intelligent interactive environment covering all scenarios, and inject impetus into product innovation and scenario expansion in the smart home industry.
At the same time, the expansion and upgrade of the “old-for-new” policy for home appliances has injected consumption power into the growth of the smart home market.
In December 2025, seven departments including the Ministry of Commerce issued a notice on the trade-in policy for consumer goods in 2026. On the basis of continuing support for traditional home appliances, the new policy included smart home and age-appropriate home products into the scope of central fund subsidies for the first time, injecting new impetus into the transformation and upgrading of the industry.
Driven by the continued release of policy dividends, industry penetration will also continue to increase.
In 2024, my country’s smart home penetration rate will reach 14.5%.
As technology iteration accelerates, the product matrix continues to be enriched, and residents’ consumer demand is upgraded to quality and intelligence, the industry’s growth momentum will continue to increase.
It is expected that by 2028, the number of active smart home users in China will exceed 191 million, and the corresponding household penetration rate will rise to 39.2%, nearly 40%.
From the perspective of market structure, my country’s smart home appliance industry is currently showing a diversified and multi-level development pattern.
From the perspective of product category and function, the smart home field can be subdivided into multiple sub-segments such as smart home appliances, smart security, smart lighting, smart audio and video, environmental control, smart health, and energy management. Each segment develops collaboratively to form a smart home ecosystem. From the perspective of product form, it can be further divided into smart single products, whole-house smart, front-end/home decoration smart, and post-installation/wireless smart. These types can adapt to the demand scenarios and installation conditions of different consumer groups.
Among them, smart home appliances, as the core component of the smart home industry, still occupy a dominant position in the overall market and are the core driving force for the growth of the smart home industry.
Data shows that in my country’s smart home market in 2023, smart home appliances will account for more than 80% of the market share.
Smart home appliances mainly refer to home appliances that are based on traditional home appliances and integrate sensors, communication modules, embedded systems, artificial intelligence algorithms and cloud platform capabilities to sense the environment, understand user needs, and have certain independent decision-making and continuous learning capabilities.
Although the prosperity of traditional home appliances has been limited by the pressure on the real estate industry in recent years, the scale and penetration rate of the smart home appliance market have maintained a steady upward trend, showing strong endogenous growth resilience and structural opportunities driven by consumption upgrades.
Data shows that from 2021 to 2025, the size of my country’s smart home appliance market will grow from 576 billion yuan to 793.8 billion yuan, and the penetration rate will simultaneously increase from 61.7% to 67.9%.
It is estimated that in 2030, the market size of my country’s smart home appliance industry is expected to further exceed 1.1 trillion yuan, with the penetration rate rising to 75.0%.
At present, the smart home field presents a dual evolution path.
At the vertical level, breakthroughs in artificial intelligence algorithm optimization and network communication security technologies (such as quantum encryption and zero-trust architecture) continue to reconstruct device interaction logic, greatly improving the efficiency of cross-brand device collaboration.
For example, if devices are interconnected through the Matter protocol, users can use one APP to control home appliances throughout the house, improving the success rate of cross-platform device linkage.
At the same time, leading companies have broken the “fragmentation” dilemma through open cloud service interfaces and unified protocol standards.
At the horizontal level, industry manufacturers have accelerated their transformation from single product suppliers to scenario solution providers. Their business boundaries have extended from residential to smart communities, commercial complexes and other diverse scenarios, and the coverage of product applicable scenarios has increased.
At present, smart homes have begun to penetrate many fields such as smart hotels, smart real estate, smart senior care, and smart offices.
my country’s smart home market players can be mainly divided into four major categories: smart home ecological chain companies, single product hardware companies, traditional home appliance companies, and Internet companies.
Smart home ecological chain companies, represented by Xiaomi, Huawei, and EZVIZ, adopt a “platform + hardware” two-wheel drive model, focusing on the overall intelligent solution for the whole house. Relying on strong R&D strength, the products fully cover all home scenarios and can provide users with an integrated whole-house intelligent experience.
Single-product hardware companies, represented by Ecovacs and Jimi, focus on specific vertical fields of smart home, and use technology to drive the creation of popular products to enter the market. The single-product performance is leading, with strong adaptability and high flexibility.
Traditional home appliance companies, represented by Midea, Gree, Haier, etc., rely on their deep brand influence and complete channel resources to focus on promoting the intelligent upgrading of traditional home appliances. They have mature product quality control and extensive offline channel layout.
Internet companies, represented by Alibaba, JD.com, Tencent, etc., take platform ecological construction as the core, integrate third-party hardware brand resources by building intelligent platforms, and continuously expand service scenarios.
