During the 2026 New Year's Day holiday, the trend toward intelligent transformation in the home furnishing consumer market became even more evident. A visit by a Beijing Business Today reporter to mainstream home furnishing malls such as Red Star Macalline and Easyhome found that smart home products equipped with AI and IoT technologies had become the core of consumer interest. From whole-home smart linkage systems to intelligent security and lighting devices, various smart products were surrounded by consumers stopping to experience them, showing that smart consumption is gradually moving from a trend to the mainstream.

Industry insiders said that one of the core changes in the consumer market today is that artificial intelligence is shifting from being an efficiency tool to becoming a collaborative partner in daily life. Consumers expect technology to be deeply embedded in living scenarios and to proactively provide adaptive services. This means that competition in the smart home industry has upgraded from competing on single functions to building people-centered ecosystem experience capabilities covering all scenarios. The performance of the New Year's Day market is a vivid reflection of this profound transformation.

The wave of intelligence

At the Huawei HarmonyOS Smart Home authorized experience store in Easyhome on North Fourth Ring Road, staff demonstrated whole-home smart linkage scenarios on site. The reporter observed that after the voice command good morning was given, the curtains opened automatically, the lights gradually turned on, and the air purifier and humidifier started up at the same time.

Consumer Ms. Cao said that her home had just been renovated and she wanted to install a complete whole-home smart system. She had been paying attention to such solutions before, but did not know exactly what the finished effect would look like. She came to the store during the New Year's Day holiday to experience it, and after watching the on-site demonstration, she felt it was even more convenient than she had imagined.

A store clerk told the reporter that smart products are drawing the attention of more and more consumers, and customers come to the store almost every day to inquire and try them out. During the New Year's Day holiday, sales of smart home appliances in the store increased, and many consumers came specifically for whole-home smart solutions.

In fact, not only whole-home smart systems but also smart security products are attracting consumer attention. Smart door locks and smart cameras have become popular products. Consumer Mr. Ma said that his family had long wanted to replace their smart door lock. Their previous lock was a fingerprint lock, but it sometimes failed when his hands were full or when there was dirt on the fingerprint sensor. He came to look at new smart door locks with facial recognition and remote control functions.

The 2026 New Year's Eve Consumption Data Research Report released by the Institute of Pan-regional Industry Innovation shows that the smart home market posted strong growth on New Year's Eve in 2026. IDC estimates that shipments in China's smart home market will exceed 300 million units in 2026, with core categories such as smart security, smart lighting, and smart home appliances continuing to dominate the market.

Digital business innovation consultant Tang Xingtong said that intelligence will be especially important in future development trends. AI-driven personalized design and delivery capabilities are becoming a threshold. Whoever can use AI to help consumers choose a whole-home solution in 15 minutes will have stronger stickiness. Enterprises will also shift from simply selling furniture to providing space solutions, storage, intelligent features, partial renovation, and after-sales operation and maintenance.

Dual drivers of policy and consumer mindset

Behind the wave of smart home consumption lies the dual driving force of policy support and changing consumer attitudes. A dense rollout of favorable national policies has injected strong momentum into the development of the smart home industry.

The Notice on Implementing the Policy for Large-scale Equipment Renewal and Trade-ins of Consumer Goods in 2026, officially implemented on January 1, 2026, clearly expands subsidized consumer digital products into digital and intelligent products, and allows local governments to independently implement subsidies for smart home products, including age-friendly home products, according to local conditions.

Previously, the Notice on Several Measures to Promote Home Furnishing Consumption, issued by 13 departments including the Ministry of Commerce, also identified smart home furnishing as a new field and new track, supporting backbone enterprises in jointly developing whole-home intelligent and green solutions, promoting interconnection among smart home devices, establishing and improving a standards system, and advancing development from single smart products to whole-home intelligence.

In fact, stronger policy support has lowered consumers' purchase costs and made them more inclined to buy intelligent products. Consumer Ms. Cheng said that after receiving a 15% subsidy on a smart washing machine priced at RMB 5,000, she saved RMB 750. Combined with the mall's New Year's Day promotion, her actual spending was nearly RMB 1,000 less than usual.

The introduction of these policies has promoted the development of the smart home market. Meanwhile, changes in consumer attitudes have driven the popularization of smart homes from the demand side. The 2025 White Paper on Young People's Smart Home Life Trends shows a clear trend toward younger consumers in home furnishing and home appliance spending across the internet, with consumers under the age of 35 accounting for nearly 60%. Younger consumers place greater emphasis on quality of life and convenience, viewing smart homes as an important way to enhance happiness in daily life.

Tang Xingtong said that as digital natives who have grown up alongside internet and IoT technologies, Generation Z has been immersed in living environments surrounded by smart devices since childhood, giving them a natural familiarity with and adaptability to the interaction logic and scenario-based functions of smart products. In terms of consumer values, this group is gradually moving beyond the traditional framework of merely meeting basic functional needs and toward a deeper pursuit of emotional resonance and immersive experience, becoming the core catalyst driving smart home consumption from niche early adoption to mass popularity.

A long road to ecosystem building

With policy support and changes in consumer attitudes, the smart home market has broad prospects. However, judging from current industry development, it still faces problems such as pseudo-smart products, data leakage, and unstable systems.

Wang Jianguo, co-founder of Xinshe Huixuegu and an expert on China's home furnishing, design industry, and internet sectors, said that when some enterprises enter the smart market, what they really focus on is the smart concept, without having truly workable smart products. In many cases, it may be more a form of capital hype. Smart home development emphasizes scenario-based products and industry-wide ecosystems.

The Consumer Survey Report on Smart Home and Home Appliance Products released by the Jiangsu Consumer Council shows that from January 1. to November 30, 2025, there were 59,837 entries of consumer rights protection public opinion in Jiangsu Province related to smart home and home appliance products. The findings show that pseudo-smart products are a prominent issue. Some products may look novel and eye-catching in appearance, but their functions are not very practical. Some control apps for smart home products have safety risks such as excessive advertising insertion and unauthorized access to camera and microphone permissions. The products themselves also frequently suffer from quality issues such as system failures, touchscreen malfunction, and network disconnection.

He Shaoxuan, chairman of Yuyun Home, said that as AI technology continues to deepen in data collection and application, personal information security control is of critical importance. How to regulate the use of AI for collecting user data and how to properly manage data both require stronger supervision and guidance at the national level.

In fact, the problems exposed on the consumer side not only affect consumer experience and confidence, but also reflect the industry's stage-specific shortcomings in technological depth and ecosystem collaboration, meaning that the industry still faces the challenge of moving from smart single products to a smart ecosystem.

A truly intelligent home requires not only interconnection among devices, but also AI systems that can understand user habits and proactively provide services. Tang Xingtong pointed out that to break through the pseudo-smart dilemma, the first priority is to shift from the mindset of human control to one of invisible intelligence. Truly smart homes should not require consumers to frequently take out their phones and open apps for manual operation. Instead, they should be integrated into everyday scenarios to deliver an experience that works quietly and naturally. This means enterprises need to shift their research and development focus from simple device connection to accurate perception and advance prediction of user habits, allowing technology to serve invisible needs rather than explicit operations. Secondly, the industry needs to abandon the traditional logic that single products are king, and proactively embrace an ecosystem-oriented development direction based on scenario linkage, creating a complete smart experience through cross-device collaboration.

Source: Beijing Business Today