Big Market for Smart Home Appliances
In the sweltering summer, various and multi-functional home appliances have achieved good sales results. According to media reports, household appliances and kitchen small appliances have high sales revenue, and foot massagers, steam cleaners, etc. have seen significant growth in sales compared to last year. Currently, under the dual drivers of policy guidance and market demand, the smart home appliance industry, as a vital life industry closely related to residents' lives, is presenting an upward trend from scale expansion to quality improvement.
In recent years, China's smart home appliance industry has seen remarkable development achievements, mainly reflected in three aspects:
One is that sales revenue has steadily increased and the level of intelligence has continued to rise. According to data from JD Consumer & Industry Research Institute, only within June 5th to July 24th this year, the sales revenue of smart home appliances such as electric kettles, tea machines, and window cleaning robots has achieved a multi-fold increase. Smart home appliances have also shifted from passive response to proactive service, with their interaction methods becoming increasingly humanized, functional implementation becoming more precise, scene coordination becoming more systematic, and autonomous decision-making becoming more forward-looking.
Two is that innovation capabilities have seen significant improvements, with global competitiveness strengthened. For example, Zhejiang Cixi is a well-known household appliance production base nationwide, earning the reputation of "China's Small Home Appliance Capital". The local small home appliance industry has driven product upgrades through enterprise-led innovation, government policy support, and collaborative research and development with research institutes and universities, constantly enhancing its advantages and competitiveness globally, making Cixi the source of 60% of global small home appliances.
Three is that international market expansion has continued to deepen, with a higher value chain position. Domestic market competition has become increasingly intense, with many smart home appliance enterprises opening up international markets as their growth "second curve". For instance, Shunde, Guangdong Province, as the "Home Appliance Capital", is the main export base of Foshan, with exports to the United States, Europe, and the Middle East totaling 65 billion yuan, 59.3 billion yuan, and 40.5 billion yuan respectively, with year-on-year growth rates of 4.1%, 9.1%, and 5%.
Despite these achievements, the smart home appliance industry still faces some issues. For example, product core chip imports rely heavily on foreign sources, algorithm gaps cause products to lag behind international standards in precision control, intelligence level, and energy consumption performance. Additionally, homogenized competition in the existing market has led to decreased profitability for enterprises, disrupted market order, and eroded consumer trust, severely compressing innovation space. At the same time, tariff barriers and non-tariff barriers are piled up, local R&D is insufficient, and standard-setting authority is lacking, making it difficult for domestic smart home appliances to internationalize their operations. Furthermore, response to consumers' health, cleanliness, and after-sales needs is relatively low, leading to poor user experience.
To resolve these difficulties, we must work together from multiple angles to break down the development bottlenecks. We can build an industrial ecosystem by fostering national-level industrial clusters, offering research and development incentives and preferential policies, strengthening vertical integration between upstream and downstream industries, forming a coexistence pattern led by flagship enterprises, and optimizing resource allocation.
We must also improve public service support networks by setting up public technical service platforms, providing low-cost detection and certification services for small and medium-sized enterprises, and implementing quality grading and certification systems to guide the industry towards quality competition.
We should focus on enterprise innovation transformation to enhance core competitiveness. Technical innovation is the lifeblood of an enterprise, and we must address the problem of technology "bottlenecks", increase research and development investment ratios, and enhance product quality to achieve breakthroughs in key components and reduce dependence on foreign technologies and products.
We should also promote enterprises to transition towards digitalization and greenification, constantly strengthening their innovation capabilities, improving product added value, responding to consumer needs, and achieving both efficiency and sustainability.
In conclusion, we must enhance consumer awareness and activate market demand through innovative consumption guidance methods, increasing consumers' cognition of smart home appliances and acceptance rate. We can build a transparent information disclosure system for smart home appliances, strengthen data security and privacy protection, improve after-sales service mechanisms, and safeguard consumers' legitimate rights and interests.