Regarding the ecological pattern, technology trends and consumer demand of the future overall market development, IDC summarized and gave the top ten insights into China's smart home market in 2024. The specific contents are as follows

Insight 1: Smart home ecological integration will develop in depth, and the degree of device linkage will gradually deepen.

IDC predicts that the proportion of Internet platform access in China's smart home equipment market will be 76% in 2024, roughly the same year-on-year rate. Affected by the competition among leading platforms, horizontal interoperability between them will still take time. Deepening the degree of device interconnection under the platform will become the main direction of the development of the smart home ecosystem. Device linkage will gradually develop from basic switch control to deep functional collaboration. Among them, home security monitoring equipment, which has a relatively fragmented competitive landscape, will take the lead in deepening cooperation, driven by scenario-based needs.

Insight 2: Intelligent home infrastructure will redefine the division of smart home scenarios and accelerate the process of smart home scenarios.

The extension of intelligence to home infrastructure such as water, electricity, gas, and heating will redefine the division of smart home scenarios. In the future, the smart home market will focus on seven major scenarios: intelligent lighting, home infrastructure, air management, security management, audio and video entertainment, home cleaning and cooking, and will gradually deepen from linkage control to integrated management of comprehensive safety, health, energy saving and other aspects. At the same time, the intelligence of home infrastructure will drive the intelligent upgrade of related equipment and stimulate innovation in the functions and forms of smart home equipment.

Insight 3: Large models will improve the accuracy and naturalness of human-computer interaction and promote the construction of a home distributed interaction network

Large models will gradually empower voice, vision and sensory interaction capabilities, improving the human-computer interaction experience in the home environment. Among them, the coverage and accuracy of voice and visual interaction will be improved. IDC predicts that the shipments of smart home devices with built-in voice assistants will account for nearly 21% in 2024, and the shipments of smart home devices that support facial recognition functions will increase by 14% year-on-year. Ambient intelligence will be upgraded around user behavior calculations, improving screen interaction experience and sensor interaction capabilities, and promoting the construction of a whole-house distributed interaction network.

Insight 4: The implementation of spatially directional interaction technology will promote the migration of mobile ecology to the home environment and enrich the smart home application ecology

Spatial directivity technology breaks the distance limitation of original screen interaction and is more in line with the interaction needs in home space. Its installation on smart home devices builds a bridge for the migration of the mobile ecology centered on screen interaction to the home environment, and contributes to the enrichment and development of the smart home application ecology. In the short term, this technology will be concentrated in the high-end market due to cost constraints.

Insight 5: Base stations will become the hub for device status conversion in the home environment, incubating more smart home mobile devices.

In the process of the development of smart home devices from fixed to mobile, the base station will become the hub for the device to switch between fixed and mobile states by supplementing the device's battery life, expanding functions and supporting computing power, promoting the realization of mobility for more smart home devices. Upgrades and breakthroughs enrich the application scenarios of equipment. IDC predicts that nearly 2% of smart home devices will be equipped with base stations in 2024, of which sweeping robots are the main product component, and more categories such as smart speakers and smart gateways will be upgraded.

Insight 6: Whole-house intelligence will extend the user access chain, meet the needs of the aftermarket, and stimulate the market potential of upgrading old homes.

Affected by the real estate cycle, the importance of the aftermarket has gradually increased. Among them, the demand for upgrading and renovation of old houses will become one of the directions for the expansion of the whole-house smart market. To this end, whole-house smart manufacturers will accelerate the improvement of the adaptability of equipment to different post-installation modification situations and the convenience of solution deployment, such as improving the compatibility of wall switches with different circuits to better meet the needs of the post-installation market.

Insight 7: The importance of pet market demand will gradually increase, promoting the development of smart home personalized services

As users pay more attention to pets, more and more pet lovers will choose smart home devices to improve their pets' lives. This will not only promote the innovative development of pet-specific smart devices, but also promote the upgrade of existing smart home devices, develop new functions such as cleaning and care based on the needs of pets, and provide personalized service models based on the preferences of different types of pets

Insight 8: Whole-house smart manufacturers are increasing their lighting track layout. Scenario-based solutions and the concept of no main lights will help them form a competitive advantage.

The smart lighting market will continue to grow rapidly and attract more players to enter the market. Among them, whole-house smart manufacturers will rely on their accumulation in the field of scene-based solution design to increase their layout of smart main-less lights, gradually forming their competitive advantages in the lighting market, and promoting the further upgrading and development of the smart lighting market. IDC predicts that China's smart track light market shipments will increase by 63% year-on-year in 2024.

Insight 9: Localization of AI capabilities will improve the privacy protection capabilities of smart home devices

As the end-side computing power of smart home devices increases, AI capabilities such as facial recognition and speech recognition will gradually migrate locally, leaving data with high privacy sensitivity for local computing and processing, improving the privacy protection capabilities of smart home devices. IDC predicts that 2% of smart cameras will have local face recognition capabilities in 2024, helping to alleviate users' concerns about privacy and security.

Insight 10: Service team building will become an important part of channel upgrades for smart home manufacturers, and a mixed team model of high-line self-operation and low-line outsourcing will become the development direction

Insufficient after-sales service capabilities are one of the factors leading to poor user satisfaction with smart homes, especially among young user groups. Therefore, smart home manufacturers will speed up and improve the construction of service teams to provide users with more timely and effective support and services. At the same time, in order to better balance service quality and regional penetration, more and more manufacturers will adopt the "high-line self-operation + low-line outsourcing" mixed team model to operate.