Smart homes have been popular for so many years. Is your home really “smart”?
You may have had this experience: you bought a bunch of smart devices, installed four or five apps on your phone, and had to re-configure the network for each one; the smart speaker couldn’t hear you clearly, the sweeping robot got stuck under the sofa and couldn’t get out, and when you woke up at night, you shouted to turn on the lights, waking up the whole family.
This is not a personal problem, but a common problem in the entire industry.
The “2026 Global and China Smart Home Industry Development Research Report” shows that the positive sentiment of smart home products accounts for only 59%, which is 15 percentage points lower than the overall market.
More importantly, 37% of users have more than 5 devices of different brands at home, and on average they need to install 4.3 apps to control them all.
After so many years of interconnection, consumers are still troubled by ecological fragmentation.
However, the industry is undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift – from “passive response” to “active intelligence”, from “single product networking” to “whole house intelligence”.
In 2026, leading manufacturers have deeply embedded AI large models into smart home systems. Air conditioners can sense the position of the human body and automatically adjust the wind direction. Washing machines can identify clothing materials and match cleaning programs. Refrigerators can identify ingredients and proactively recommend recipes.
Let’s learn more about smart homes.
In terms of market overview, China’s smart home market will grow from 580.1 billion yuan in 2021 to 1,017 billion yuan in 2025, officially breaking the trillion mark.
However, the growth rate has gradually slowed down from 16% in the early stage to about 8.5% in 2031. The growth momentum is shifting from “device popularization” to “value upgrade”, and consumers are pursuing systematic intelligent experiences across devices and scenarios.
From a global perspective, the global smart home market will be approximately US$174 billion in 2025, with Asia becoming the largest regional market accounting for 40.9%.
From the perspective of category structure, smart home appliances are firmly in the first echelon with a market share of 66%.
Global regional differences are obvious. North America relies on spontaneous demand for consumer electronics and is dominated by the Amazon/Google/Apple ecosystem; Europe relies on policies and mandatory building energy efficiency regulations; Asia relies on industrial clusters. China has built the world’s largest 5G and optical fiber network, with more than 8 billion Internet of Things connections; in Japan and South Korea, Japan’s aging is forcing age-friendly intelligence, and South Korea’s group technology competition.
China’s smart home market has formed three major camps. The traditional home appliance camp, such as Haier, Midea, and Gree, has a full-category supply chain but weak ecological entrance; the technology ecology camp, such as Huawei and Xiaomi, has an operating system and user base but relies on the ecological chain for hardware manufacturing; the vertical specialist camp, such as Oribo, Lumi, and Tuya, is deeply involved in niche scenarios but is small in scale.
Ecological fragmentation is the current core bottleneck, and it is difficult for devices of different brands to interconnect.
In terms of technological breakthroughs, large AI models drive active intelligence, such as Huawei Xiaoyi Butler 6.0, Haier AI Eye 2.0, Midea MevoX self-evolving intelligence, etc.
Edge AI solves privacy and real-time pain points, and the new generation of end-side AI chips enables devices to process data locally.
The front-loading and after-loading markets have different logics.
The front-end installation market is embedded in the decoration design stage, with high system integration and supports high-end scenarios; the post-installation market can be installed at any time after moving in, which is flexible and convenient, and has a low threshold for early adopters.
This report shows that the competitive logic of smart homes is shifting from “connection” to “understanding”.
For consumers, although interconnection is becoming a reality, the dilemma of “multiple apps and multiple islands” is difficult to solve in the short term; for brands, the benefits of closed ecology are fading, open collaboration is the inevitable direction, and overseas expansion and energy integration are the growth tracks.
The ultimate form of smart home is to become a “family partner” that can understand and take care of users, and this day is approaching rapidly.
