Cozier life is on, powered by smarter tech

On top of Huawei, Chinese smartphone vendor Xiaomi Corp is also scrambling to tap into the smart home market by enhancing interconnectivity across all usage scenarios and expanding its diverse smart living product portfolio. In the second quarter, Xiaomi's revenue from IoT and lifestyle products amounted to 19.8 billion yuan, with many IoT product categories achieving solid growth in the domestic market.

Traditional home appliance manufacturers are also accelerating steps to launch smart home products like air conditioners, televisions, refrigerators and washing machines by applying 5G, AI and IoT technologies.

Refrigerators that can monitor the freshness of foods, help users order ingredients and recommend recipes via analyzing user habits and preferences, for instance, have become a reality in people's daily lives.

"In the era of 5G and IoT, what users need are not homogeneous products, but customized solutions to meet personalized lives. We are willing to introduce tailor-made services for more families," said Li Huagang, president of Haier Smart Home, a subsidiary of China's largest home appliance manufacturer Haier Group.

Such efforts also dovetail with the central government's call to promote consumption of green and smart home appliances, as part of efforts to stabilize growth and expand employment.

A guideline, jointly proposed by the Ministry of Commerce and other government departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State Administration for Market Regulation, was released earlier this year to encourage enterprises to develop smart home products that are also available in rural markets and satisfy the demand from senior citizens.

Zhao Meimei, assistant president of All View Cloud, said some challenges and difficulties have cropped up in the development of smart home devices.

"Smart home products made by different manufacturers usually can't be connected, and we still rely on foreign suppliers for high-end smart chips. It will still take several years to see the large-scale application of smart home devices," Zhao said.