Midea Group, based in Foshan, Guangdong province, announced it would research and develop smart appliances in March 2014. So far, it has made such products across 30 categories, from electric cookers to air conditioners, and launched an app to connect them.
The company expects its intelligent products to account for half of sales in 2016, says Li Qiang, head of Midea's Research Institute for Smart Homes.
Midea's sales in the first three quarters of 2015 reached 111.37 billion yuan ($16.9 billion; 15.4 billion euros), up 2 percent year-on-year.
"R&D for smart home products is a major part of Midea's technological innovation as the company presses ahead with its transformation and upgrades to the Internet age," Li says.
The company invested nearly 3 billion yuan in a global R&D center in Foshan in 2014 to incubate smart home products. In December that year, it teamed up with Xiaomi Corp, a major smartphone maker, and seven months later they produced an intelligent air conditioner that can automatically adjust the ambient temperature to suit the body condition as monitored by Xiaomi's wearable device, an electronic bracelet.
Midea went on to top Chinese home appliances makers on the Fortune China 500 list in 2015, a year that saw many corporate marriages between players in the manufacturing and IT sectors. For instance, Haier Group forged a link with Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the world's third biggest smartphone maker, and Gree Electric Appliances Inc, which also makes white goods, linked up with e-retailer JD.com.
The Haier-Huawei partnership, formed in August, aims to integrate intelligent modules, interaction between mobile terminals and home appliances, and the sharing of cloud-computing data. The Gree-JD tie-up in December focuses on marketing and online sales.
Besides integrating Internet technologies, traditional manufacturers are adopting the new marketing mindsets of their tech-savvy partners.
For instance, Galanz Group, a household appliances manufacturer in Zhongshan, Guangdong, promoted the so-called fan economy in 2015 to deepen bonds with its legion of loyal consumers, whom it calls "Tomatoes".
Galanz, known for its microwave ovens, organized sales promotions and cooking competitions involving its kitchen appliances. Such activities have an eye on estimates of future market activity.
According to a joint report by the China Household Electrical Appliances Association and All View Consulting Ltd, the output value of the smart home industry is forecast to surge to 1 trillion yuan by 2020.
The size of the smart home market in China will also expand to nearly 330 billion yuan in 2020, according to Qianjia, a website specializing in intelligent product building, smart home appliances and artificial intelligence.
Oddly, the excitement that marks the launch of all kinds of smart products appears limited to makers of home appliances, and does not necessarily translate to a fantastic user experience.
A 2014 survey by QQ, a Chinese instant-messaging service, showed 95 percent of 50,338 respondents were interested in a smart home technology, but only 12 percent believed the products on the market meet their expectations.
Shen Guanghui, 25, a salesperson at a toy wholesaler in Chongqing, started buying intelligent household appliances in 2014. He described a scenario of his ideal smart home: When he prepares lunch in the kitchen, the airconditioner will "hear" the sounds made by the cooker and automatically start to cool the dining room, while the kettle will start to boil water based on its "memory" of his habit of drinking tea after cooking.
"But now, I still need to order most of the so-called intelligent home appliances to do what I want them to do with apps on my cellphone. They are not smart enough," he says. "And different brands have their own apps to control their smart home products, which is inconvenient."
