On May 26, Aowei Cloud released the report “New Opportunities in the Smart Home Market under the AI Wave in 2023”, which introduced the development status, industrial chain and other aspects of my country’s smart home industry.
Zhao Meimei, assistant to the president and general manager of the Innovation Department of Aowei Cloud Network, pointed out that the ChatGPT+Matter protocol will find a new channel for the development of the smart home market.
As the concept of ChatGPT continues to gain popularity, AI technology has been more widely used in home life scenarios.
People have a new understanding of natural language processing capabilities driven by artificial intelligence technology, which also provides more imagination space for the future development of smart home appliances and smart homes.
Zhao Meimei said that the clear future direction of my country’s smart home market is artificial intelligence home appliances.
The current entrance and control of smart homes mainly rely on central control screens and speakers. In the future, as AI technology continues to mature, it will help make smart home scenarios non-inductive, from the current command-based interaction to understanding interaction, further ushering in a truly technological and futuristic home.
Smart homes started in the microcomputer era and completely exploded in the Internet of Things era.
As AIOT new technologies are fully integrated into space intelligence, 5G+AIOT empowers the innovation of smart home products, and the smart home 3.0 model will realize intelligent interconnection of smart products.
Generally speaking, the current development level of smart home in my country is fully in line with the global smart home development level, and the smart home industry has officially entered the rapid development channel in my country.
The smart home industry chain has a wide span and is blooming in many subdivisions.
From upstream hardware and software support companies, to midstream system platform vendors and smart home product suppliers, to downstream online and offline sales channels and real estate developers, smart home research covers components, middleware, Internet of Things, AI, system platforms, products, etc.
Taken together, the middle reaches of the smart home industry chain are dominated by the production and manufacturing of various smart devices, which have the highest value.
The upstream market has high technical thresholds and high concentration. Overseas manufacturers have a strong first-mover advantage, but domestic manufacturers are also rising rapidly.
According to public data, the market concentration of the top five MCU chips in the world exceeds 80%, and they are basically overseas giants. my country’s chip self-sufficiency rate is about 6%, and there is still a lot of room for domestic substitution.
“The development of the smart home industry is still in the accumulation stage of quantitative changes, and the development pace of each smart single product is fast and slow.” Zhao Meimei took the retail channel data of smart home appliances as an example. Through Aowei Cloud Network data, the retail sales of smart air conditioners will exceed 40 million units in 2022, the scale of artificial intelligence TVs will exceed 25 million units, and the retail sales of smart speakers and smart kitchen appliances will also exceed 20 million units. There are certain differences in the development of different smart single products.
It should be noted that due to the wide range of single products covered by the smart home industry, there will be some challenges when assessing the size of the overall smart home market, such as inconsistent estimated scales.
The most fundamental reason is that different organizations in the industry have different judgments on the scale of the smart home industry, and the scope of products and equipment included is different, resulting in differences.
Aowei Cloud Network report shows that in the smart home industry, the three categories that are currently developing fastest are smart security, smart lighting, and smart audio and video.
Intelligent security ranks first among existing products mainly due to the exploration of consumer pain points and needs. From the perspective of consumer demand, intelligent security demand ranks among the top.
The smart housekeeper scenario is currently a relatively well-implemented scenario in smart homes. It uses a management platform to coordinate the connection and control of devices in the home and realize the intelligent control of traditional home products.
“Nowadays, the pace of work and life is very fast. Users need to pay constant attention to groups such as the elderly, young children, and pets, and some users have adopted smart home smart care scenarios.” Zhao Meimei pointed out that smart care scenarios have sufficient implementation requirements, but compared with the other two major scenarios, their current level of perfection is low, implementation is difficult, and user acceptance is relatively low. Therefore, there is still a long way to go to develop smart care scenarios.
The long-term development of the whole-house smart ecosystem requires the collaborative implementation of the smart product layer, platform layer, and solution layer.
At present, my country’s smart home market is still facing various challenges, including insufficient product interconnectivity, diverse user needs, insufficient product pain points, security and privacy concerns, immature supply chain management, etc.
However, the general development direction and long-term trend of the smart home market will not change.
Aowei Cloud Network’s report pointed out that there are five main driving forces for the development of my country’s smart home market, including the improvement of users’ awareness and acceptance of scene purchases and package purchases, AI technology changes and the insensitivity of smart home entrances, the strengthening of interconnection by the Matter protocol, the two-wheel drive of the after-installation and pre-installation markets, and the further improvement of smart home service capabilities.
Consumer survey data shows that when users are asked in which scenarios they want to use smart home products recently, 66% of users choose smart living rooms, 61% of smart entrances, and more than 50% of smart bedrooms and home security.
Compared with previous cognition, this ratio shows that people’s cognition has developed to a great extent.
At the same time, 81.4% of users who have the need to purchase home appliances are aware of or have heard of this method of purchasing home appliances, and have a high level of interest in purchasing.
Users’ awareness and acceptance of scene purchasing and package purchasing are gradually increasing, which will help the market promotion of smart homes.
With the continuous transformation and development of AI technology, the entrance to smart homes will gradually become insensitive, while taking into account the safety and convenience of smart homes, realizing the transformation of smart homes from “intelligent” to “smart”.
At this stage, smart home products mainly use voice commands and question-and-answer interaction methods. With the development of AI technology, smart home products can meet the requirements of active understanding and active intelligence, and the level of interaction with users will also reach a new level.
It is worth noting that in the long run, the “entry theory” may itself be a false proposition, and the entire industry will be in a state of no entrance.
It is understood that since the Matter protocol debuted in September last year, more and more smart home categories have joined the certification, which is conducive to breaking the “isolated island” situation in the smart home field.
Data shows that as of January 2023, about 600 products and APPs have officially joined the Matter protocol, and more products are being added to the certification in the future.
According to Aowei Cloud Network, 2023 will be a key milestone year for the Matter protocol. More innovative products compatible with the Matter protocol will be launched and eventually reach end consumers.
With the iteration of the Matter protocol, it will help solve interconnection issues and further improve the overall smart home ecosystem.
From a channel perspective, the two-wheel drive of the aftermarket and front-mounted markets will accelerate the further implementation of smart homes.
The service capabilities of smart homes are gradually improving, and comprehensive smart home capabilities have been formed in the three aspects of intelligent perception, intelligent interaction, and intelligent decision-making, maximizing the value of collaborative and comprehensive intelligent services, and integrating more dimensions of information to meet the specific needs of users.
In recent years, thanks to the increase in people’s disposable income and the pursuit of comfortable and quality family life, the demand for smart home products has continued to grow.
At present, our country is in a period of comprehensive explosion of smart homes. People pay more attention to the improvement of family happiness and experience. The smart home market is gradually opening up, and the market development prospects are very broad.
Aowei Cloud Network has great expectations for the future development of smart homes. It is expected that the smart home market will reach 18.2% in 2023, and the compound growth rate will reach about 20% by 2025.
