Home appliance companies are embracing the Internet, and the air conditioning industry is catching up with the wave of intelligence

Earlier this year, Google acquired Nest, a leader in the US smart home industry, for US$3.2 billion, intending to implement its smart home strategy through sensor products.

Google's move instantly ignited enthusiasm in the global smart home market.

Three months later, the smart home craze, which mainly relies on white appliances such as air conditioners and refrigerators, has swept from the global market to the Chinese market, and China's white appliance industry has begun to experience the baptism of the wave of intelligence.

If the smart home industry abroad is still planning around peripheral devices, Chinese home appliance companies are starting from the basics and directly working on product intelligence.

Analysts pointed out that the reason why China's home appliance industry can respond quickly to intelligence is closely related to the fact that Chinese home appliance companies have dominant pricing power in the international market. China is the world's largest home appliance consumer market and the world's largest home appliance manufacturing base, with complete and supporting industry development momentum.

In fact, the concept of smart home has been proposed for a long time. After the smart TV, the smart white appliances are an inevitable trend. In the smart home ecosystem, smart air conditioners are an indispensable part. Only when all terminal products are intelligent can the advantages of smart home be fully reflected and consumers' lives can be truly convenient.

Wang Lei, vice president of the China Household Electrical Appliances Association, also said, "Smart home products are the construction of an ecosystem of cross-industry cooperation, resource integration, and user interaction." This requires multiple terminal products to cooperate with each other through a smart home system.

The rapid development of the Internet constantly reminds home appliance companies to transform to the Internet, and it also drives the development of smart white appliances. With the concept of smart home becoming more mature, Chinese home appliance companies realize that the time is ripe for smart white appliances. Home appliance companies are competing to launch smart products and actively promote their smart life strategies.

At this year's AWE (China Home Appliance Expo), a large number of Chinese home appliance companies, including Changhong, TCL, Haier, and Midea, exhibited their smart home products including refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, etc. at almost the same time, and successively released smart home strategies with grand vision and great imagination. This shows the great efforts of home appliance companies to make white goods smart.

On March 17, Haier announced the official launch of its smart home platform. Haier said that the Haier U+ smart life operating system can interconnect all smart home terminals, emphasize the interaction between people and products, and create four major sections: air ecosystem, food ecosystem, water ecosystem and smart community.

On the same day, Midea Air Conditioning announced that it had signed a cloud strategic cooperation agreement with Alibaba and jointly developed an IoT smart air conditioner. Alibaba Group CTO Wang Jian said that next month the two sides will connect their account systems to enable remote wireless control of Midea smart home appliances through Alibaba's apps such as Laiwang and Alipay.

On the other hand, Changhong's smart home strategy has also been implemented, and it has announced that smart air conditioners will be launched soon, declaring that the intelligent integration process of its black and white appliances has entered the stage of comprehensive layout.

Third- and fourth-tier air-conditioning manufacturers such as AUX and Galanz have also successively launched smart air-conditioning products with their own characteristics.

From the development strategies of home appliance giants such as Haier, Midea, and Changhong, it can be seen that in the era of mobile Internet, it is not just individual terminal products such as mobile phones, televisions, and air conditioners that are intelligent. The smart home operating system targets all smart terminals in the entire home appliance ecosystem, enabling collaboration among multiple home appliances.

On the day when Changhong CHiQ TV was released, Changhong announced its smart home strategy and announced that CHiQ will be the category name of a series of smart products under Changhong based on the home Internet form, forming a closed loop of smart home ecology.

Recently, Haier also stated that in the future, wearable products and home appliances will be freely connected.

In the future layout of smart home appliances, single smart products will not be the mainstream, and the key is to connect various home appliances together. Some industry insiders boldly predict that the profit points of white appliance companies in the future will be concentrated on smart products, and the acceleration of intelligentization will become a new symbol of the white appliance industry.

Consumers are full of expectations for smart homes. AVC's online research platform survey results show that 97% of consumers believe they have the need to buy smart home appliances.

From the perspective of individual air conditioners, it is no coincidence that air conditioners have begun to transition to smart technology in the past two years. The 2014 Air Conditioning Industry White Paper points out that 2004 to 2006 was the year of popularization of air conditioners in Chinese cities, with a total of about 50 million air conditioners sold nationwide. Based on the 8- to 10-year usage cycle, the peak period for air conditioner replacement is from 2012 to 2016, and it is estimated that the number of air conditioners waiting to be replaced in the market this year will exceed 12 million.

It is believed that at the time when the air conditioner replacement wave comes, the emergence of smart air conditioners has a dual meaning. First, it provides users with higher quality products. Second, it provides a new opportunity for market reshuffle. A group of second- and third-tier brands may take this opportunity to launch a strong impact on Gree, the industry leader that has been slow to move in terms of intelligence.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.