On March 30 2022, iResearch, a market research and consulting company in China, and Aqara, a leading smart home provider owned by the IoT unicorn company Lumi United Technology, jointly released China’s first research white paper on the whole-house automation industry, A Research White Paper on China’s Whole-House Automation Industry. At the press conference, iResearch chief analyst Li Chao shared some key highlights of the white paper.
This white paper provides unique insights into the whole-house automation industry in China, including an industry overview and the driving force behind its development, an analysis of current industry landscape, and an outlook of future trends. In the white paper, iResearch expounds on the concept of whole-house automation and defines its scope, providing some clarity and guidance for the fast-growing and fast-changing industry. In this report, Aqara is presented as the benchmark case by virtue of its comprehensive product portfolio, cutting-edge technologies and innovative service models in the whole-house automation segment, which provides a reference for the industry.
The white paper indicates that the segment faces enormous opportunities, driven by the national policy including the carbon emission peak and carbon neutrality goals, and the increasing demands from the real estate industry and general users. As whole-house automation advances to the 3.0 phase, the gap between technology and demand is narrowing down, and the companies offering better user experience will gain the competitive edge. Active perception, made possible by the multi-sensor deployment, is becoming a main trend in the industry. In other words, the ultimate goal of whole-house automation is to provide users the imperceptible, proactive and personalized experiences within a fully automated home, which serves users as an invisible assistant. This coincides with Aqara’s mission of providing the customized experience of whole-house automation, and its commitment to creating homes that better understand the residents.
As a unicorn in the IoT industry, Aqara continues to lead the industry’s exploration of advanced technologies, product development, and user cases/scenarios. With years of exploration, Aqara constructed a comprehensive product portfolio that covers different scenarios and advanced underlying connectivity technologies, as well as created the end-to-end smart home implementation service system. It pioneers a twin-engine business model of the industry, which is driven by the e-commerce best-sellers and the brick-and-mortar service stores. The innovative products and the unique business model help Aqara to overcome the industry bottlenecks and to gain the competitive edge.
Aqara envisions an imperceptible smart home that understands users and provides customized whole-house automation experience. To achieve whole-house automation 3.0, which features proactive smart home experience without user command, it requires a sufficient number of sensors and controllers as the “eyes” and “hands”, as well as advanced AI technologies as the brain for analysis and command. Aqara has a wide portfolio of more than 500 products from over 30 categories, ranging from hubs, controllers, sensors, to lights and door locks, and owns patented AI technologies. Data of user behaviors and habits, obtained by the sensors, allow the AI algorithm to understand user demand via deep learning. As a result, the smart home system is capable of inferring what the user wants to do by analyzing user behaviors, and activating home control to meet the demand proactively. No input from the user is needed.
The white paper also points out that with the changing behavior of Chinese consumers and the penetration of the whole-house automation concept, market competition will come down to services and user experiences. As a leading pioneer of the whole-house automation industry, Aqara strives to boost adoption of the smart home by optimizing its business model and to provide users the truly convenient experiences.
