The smart home industry in 2026 is experiencing a value shift worthy of attention.
In the past ten years of industrial development, whether it is device networking, voice interaction, scene automation, or the rapidly developing generative AI in recent years, the industry has always focused on one core goal, which is to improve the efficiency of family life through technological means.
In essence, smart home has long been an industry with “functional value” as its core driving force. Enterprises have continuously improved device connection capabilities, perception capabilities and independent decision-making capabilities, hoping to create user value by reducing manual operations. Whether the device is smarter, whether the algorithm is more accurate, and whether the degree of automation is higher is often an important criterion for measuring product competitiveness. The industry has therefore formed a value evaluation system centered on efficiency improvement and function optimization.
However, at the recent Global Connect Show (GCS), a development signal that is obviously different from the past began to emerge: more and more companies no longer define products as simple tools, but are beginning to try to shape them into emotional participants in family life.
Whether it is garden robots, home central control systems, children’s electronic products, or companion robots, their product positioning and value expression have undergone significant changes. Companies are no longer talking about efficiency, performance, and parameters, but comfort, companionship, security, and family relationships.
This change means that the smart home industry may be moving from the era of “functional intelligence” to the era of “emotional intelligence”.
From the perspective of industry evolution, this change is no accident.
When a technology enters a mature stage, basic capabilities tend to gradually converge, and the focus of competition between companies will shift from technical indicators to user experience. The smartphone and automobile industries have experienced similar development paths: early market competition centered on hardware parameters. After the technology matures, brands begin to emphasize ecological experience, design concepts, and emotional identification.
Today’s smart home industry is also entering this stage. The popularization of the Matter protocol, the development of Thread networks, and the improvement of edge AI capabilities are gradually making connection and automation the industry standard. When more and more brands are able to realize device interconnection, intelligent control, and autonomous linkage, it has become increasingly difficult to establish long-term competition barriers based solely on functional innovation. User emotional experience is becoming the most potential value creation direction. For consumers, what they really buy is no longer a functional module, but a more relaxed, comfortable, and enjoyable family lifestyle.
This trend is particularly evident in the field of yard automation.
In the past few years, intelligent lawn mowing robots have mainly competed around navigation accuracy, obstacle avoidance capabilities and operating efficiency. Corporate publicity usually focused on technical parameters and performance indicators.
At this year’s exhibition, the narrative logic of related products has undergone obvious changes: companies no longer emphasize how many square meters of lawn mowing the equipment can complete, nor do they use complex algorithms as the main selling point, but instead emphasize the improvement in the lifestyle of users.
For most families, purchasing a lawn mower robot is not to own an advanced machine, but to get rid of repetitive work on weekends and reallocate time to leisure, social interaction and family life. What consumers focus on is not how many minutes it takes the robot to mow the lawn, but how much time they save.
From a commercial value perspective, this means that products are transforming from “labor-saving tools” to “time management solutions.” Behind this transformation is the upgrading of consumer demand: as the world’s major markets enter the stock economy stage, people pay more and more attention to the quality of time rather than the pure quantity of time. Therefore, the value of smart home products has gradually shifted from performing the task itself to creating a more relaxed and comfortable home experience. What the industry has begun to sell is no longer automation itself, but the sense of freedom brought by automation.
The development direction of home central control systems is also changing simultaneously.
The home control center has long been viewed as an information management tool whose primary responsibility is coordinating devices, synchronizing schedules, and managing household affairs.
However, the new generation of family hub products has begun to take on more complex roles. What they are trying to solve is not only the problem of information islands, but also the problem of communication efficiency and emotional state among family members. Functions such as family calendars, family announcements, task reminders, etc. are gradually extending to the direction of family collaboration and family relationship management.
From the perspective of product positioning, such devices are evolving from “management tools” to “relationship infrastructure”. They are not just connecting devices, but also trying to connect the interactive relationships between family members. For the smart home industry, this is a change of strategic significance: the value of family relationships is much higher than the value of a single device function.
When a product can participate in family organization, coordination, and emotional communication, its user stickiness and frequency of use will be significantly improved. In the future, the core of competition in home control systems may no longer be who can connect more devices, but who can more effectively reduce friction costs in family life and help families establish a smoother collaboration mechanism.
If the home control system represents the progressive development of emotional intelligence, then the companion robot represents the ultimate form of this trend.
One of the most eye-catching products at this exhibition is the companion robot for home scenes. Unlike traditional smart devices that emphasize “helping users complete tasks,” these products emphasize “accompanying users to experience life.” This change in value proposition actually means that the smart home industry is entering the era of relationship economy.
In the past, the value of equipment came from the frequency of functional use. After the equipment completed its task, its value was released. However, companion robots are different. Their value comes from the long-term relationship formed by continuous interaction: after a sweeping robot completes its cleaning task, its value basically ends; and a companion robot that can remember family members, understand emotional changes, and continue to accumulate interactive memories, its value
The value may continue to grow over time. This model has a similar logic to the pet industry, social platforms and even the online entertainment industry. That is, product value is not delivered once, but continues to accumulate in long-term relationships. For smart home companies, this means that the most important asset in the future may no longer be the scale of hardware sales, but the depth of emotional connection formed between users and devices.
However, it is worth noting that the rise of emotional intelligence has also brought new industry challenges.
Compared with traditional automation systems, emotional intelligence systems need to collect and analyze more sensitive data. Devices not only need to understand the user’s behavioral habits, but also need to identify their emotional state, life rhythm and even family relationship characteristics. In order to achieve more accurate emotional interaction, future devices may even need to record the user’s voice, expressions, interaction frequency and behavior patterns for a long time.
As devices in the home learn more and more about users, their ability to create value will indeed increase significantly, but at the same time it will also raise new privacy and ethical issues, because emotional data is more sensitive than behavioral data and can more easily influence user decisions.
In the future, the focus of industry supervision is likely to extend from data security to emotional safety and behavioral influence management. Enterprises need to answer a new question: when a device has the ability to understand emotions, how to ensure that this ability always serves the interests of users and does not evolve into a new business manipulation tool.
Overall, the most important signal released by the industry in 2026 is not the emergence of a certain hot product, but that the value logic of the entire industry is changing.
In the past ten years, the smart home industry has mainly competed for connectivity and automation capabilities; in the next ten years, industry competition may focus more on emotional experience capabilities. Technology, AI, and device interconnection are still important, but these capabilities are gradually becoming the industry’s infrastructure.
When connectivity, control and automation become industry standards, what will really determine a company’s long-term competitiveness will be whether it can understand the deep needs of family life and create higher-quality emotional experiences through technology.
When consumers purchase smart home products in the future, they may not only pay attention to whether the device is smart enough, but whether it can reduce life stress, improve family happiness, and help users gain more time, less anxiety, and a better living condition. 2026 will therefore become an important watershed in the development of the smart home industry. The goal pursued by the industry is no longer just to make families smarter, but to make family life more calm, warmer, and more humane.
