Intelligent home appliances, such as robot vacuum cleaners and smart dishwashers, have seen booming sales and are enjoying rising popularity among Chinese consumers, which industry experts said will likely become a new engine driving consumption growth. The demand for high-quality home appliances is fueled by product upgrades, new functions becoming available, and supportive measures to spur consumption gradually taking effect, said Zhao Meimei, Assistant President of Beijing-based consultancy All View Cloud (AVC), which focuses on home appliances. Zhao expects the domestic home appliances market's growth will likely reach 3% to 4% this year. AVC said revenue of China’s home appliances sector stood at CNY708.1 billion in 2022, down 7.4% year-on-year.
Intelligent home appliances saw robust sales during the recently concluded combined Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday. Online retailer Suning.com said sales of smart dishwashers and robot vacuum cleaners surged 154% and 83% year-on-year, respectively, during the eight-day break, while the transaction volume of 80-inch and above televisions skyrocketed more than 200% from a year earlier. Chinese home appliance manufacturers, including Ecovacs Robotics and Midea Group, are eyeing the high-end robot vacuum cleaner sector and beefing up efforts in the research and development (R&D) of cutting-edge intelligent navigation technology.
Qian Cheng, Vice Chairman and CEO of Ecovacs, said the company invested CNY740 million in R&D last year, an increase of 35% year-on-year, adding that he is upbeat on prospects for the domestic robotic vacuum cleaner market. Currently, Ecovacs owns 300 brick-and-mortar stores across the nation, and it will accelerate steps to expand its offline retail channels and strengthen cooperation with social media platforms. The Suzhou, Jiangsu province-based firm recently unveiled its new series of robot products for floor cleaning, window cleaning and air purification. Moreover, its sales from overseas markets rose 26.5% year-on-year in the first half. The company will also increase investments abroad and optimize its product structure.
Midea has launched a series of floor-cleaning robot products equipped with intelligent navigation technology and high-precision LiDAR, which uses laser light to measure distances and map surroundings, and is commonly used in autonomous driving vehicles. The market penetration rate of floor-cleaning robots in Chinese urban households has been growing steadily, rising from about 3% in 2017 to nearly 10% in 2022, according to investment bank China International Capital Corp (CICC). Experts said the increasing popularity of intelligent vacuum cleaners featuring voice control and smart navigation has driven global demand for such products. China has rolled out measures to restore and expand consumption, including bolstering purchases of green and smart home appliances in rural areas amid the country’s broader push to revive recovery momentum and stabilize the economy. “The smart home appliances industry is now developing by leaps and bounds, thanks to advances in the Internet of Things (IoT), big data and other technologies,” said Zhang Yanbin, an independent researcher in the home appliances sector.
AVC said sales revenue of smart dishwashers amounted to CNY6.72 billion during the January-August period, up 6.5% compared with the same period of last year. Chinese shoppers attach great importance to safety and health, and prefer to buy premium and intelligent home appliances supported by innovative technologies. “The recovery of consumption has gathered pace and the intelligent home appliances industry will witness a notable rebound this year,” said Wang Hongji, General Manager of the white goods business department at research company China Market Monitor Co. Wang said small and medium-sized home appliance enterprises should improve their competitiveness by launching new, environmentally friendly and intelligent home appliance products to cater to consumer demand, especially in rural areas, the China Daily reports.
