The most obvious certainty of the industry reflected by the AWE 2019 AWE

AI and smart future

In every March, all attention of the household appliance & consumer electronics industry will gather at the Shanghai New International Expo Center (SNIEC) because the annual AWE (Appliance & Electronics World Expo) will be held here. Up to now, and the significance and value of AWE have been beyond the expo itself. Development of times, technological progress and environmental reform have all helped expand the denotation of AWE, and its connotation has also been further enriched.

Therefore, AWE is not so much an exposition as a collection of wisdom to explore the future from the industry. At the AWE 2019, products, modes and services launched by all enterprises not only show us the developing path of the industry and relevant enterprises, but also reflect the design and conception of the whole industry for the future. Just like the theme of AWE 2019 -- AI + Smart Life -- any increasingly cutting-edge technology will always attract more attention. In 2019, AWE with its 10 pavilions covering 130,000 square meters received 350,000+ visits and over 900 world-leading brands. The growth of consumer registration number reaches 200%. All these numbers paint an intelligent future.

Dramatic industry reform

Apart from the value of the platform and the careful and considerate organization of the sponsor, another reason why this AWE is warmly participated by manufacturers and audiences is that at present the home appliance & consumer electronics industry is within an unprecedented reform cycle.

The rapid infiltration of mobile interconnection and the Internet of things in the production, supply and selling of the industry and in the daily life of users has significantly changed the border of the home appliances and consumer electronics products. Especially after the transition of product categories from the ballooning stage into the “fission” stage, the focus of competition between enterprises has also been changing from channel and marketing to science and technology innovation and customer service.

However, user demands and consumption modes gradually surface a trend of stratification, and the user group tends to encompass more and more younger blood. In such an uncertain environment, traditional business model, it is tough for production and marketing method and business thinking to bring enterprises broader growth space with higher efficiency. Therefore, the exploration of new development channels has become the common aspiration of home appliances and consumer electronics.

User experience, operational efficiency of enterprises, business model innovation, and so on become nowadays resource into the focus of the whole industry, thus, full use of external technology to further enhance product competitiveness, with IoT market change enterprise business structure, with high-end and personalized to cater to consumer trend of layered segment trend and a wide range.

The earthshaking changes in the industrial environment have led to the large-scale investment of enterprises in intelligent products, intelligent home furnishing platforms and industrial Internet, and the boundary between home appliances & consumer electronics products and related categories will become increasingly blurred. Naturally, this situation is the inevitable result when enterprises adapt to the new industrial environment.

Vigorous AI wisdom

You can tell that there are ubiquitous intelligent products at the AWE 2019 as long as you take a glimpse. When entering any entrance of the Shanghai New International Expo Center, it only takes several minutes for every audience to get his admission ticket through self-service machines. Therefore, although this AWE has set new records in aspects of participant numbers and visitor numbers, operation efficiency and user experience have surprisingly been improved again even against the backdrop of the large increase in visitor number.

Meanwhile, AI and intelligent products and elements displayed by various enterprises at the AWE 2019 are more rich and colorful. The intelligent terminal business group of TCL launches a contextualized AI and the “4T” strategy with “AI×IoT” ecology as the core. It also proposes its market target of 200 billion to be achieved by 2023. Haier officially kicks off its global strategy layout for smart family, and its seven brands are producing a full set of smart family products in a large scale for global consumers.

Midea also initiates to establish a joint laboratory for a smart home, and the implementation of IoT strategy has entered a fast lane. Numerous foreign companies represented by Panasonic have joined the competition of AI and smart home platforms. It is worth mentioning that the China Household Electrical Appliances Association also releases its initiative for cross-border interconnection and cooperation among smart home appliances and information security standards for cloud interconnection.

From the establishment of intelligent platforms to the release of a standardized agreement issued by the association, the intellectualization of home appliances and consumer electronics products, the intelligent platforms and the full implementation of AI technology are springing, permeating into all aspects of the industry. The commercialization of 5G technology in this year will serve as an accelerator for AI and intelligence. In fact, a large number of home appliance & consumer electronics enterprises select the integration of their products with 5G technology as the trump of their demonstration.

AWE 2019 has become a centralized exhibition of AI, smart technology and IoT in the whole industry. However, as for the home appliance and consumer electronics industry, this is just the beginning. But considering the technical planning and product layout of these enterprises, more and more resources will be inclined in these aspects in the future, which make AI and intelligence the most obvious certainty in this industry.

Gentle upgrading of contextualization

The ultimate beneficiary of the accelerated implementation of AI and intelligent products is still users. Based on single product intelligence, integrated with AI technology, Intelligent interconnection will bring users unprecedented convenient and comfortable experience. Boundary expansion and technological innovation are also likely to create more new demands. Only in this way, it is possible to restructure the industrial ecology -- and perhaps this is also one of the driving forces for companies to make huge investments in AI, intelligence, and IOT -- because all company want to reshape the competitive system in the inventory “fission” phase when traditional methods and models are failing.

From the measures taken by various enterprises at this AWE, it can be seen that the coverage of smart home solutions is still expanding. If we can describe that the previous intelligence has been evolving from single intelligent product to multi-category interconnection, and then to contextualization, we can say that these intelligent products and solutions presented this are an expansion of the prior contextualization to include the contexts of a whole house and even all contexts in our life. In this respect, Haier offers a typical example because its four original contexts have reproduced and grown into the present seven contexts. The more thoroughly the user-oriented model is implemented, the more detailed the scenario-based intelligent solution will be.

The constant upgrading of intelligent solutions in terms of contextualization  is actually a development cause of AWE for so many years. Related achievements obtained by large domestic enterprises such as Haier, Midea, Gree, TCL, Hisense on the road of intelligent development have all left a mark on each and every AWE. When intelligence and AI become the common pursuit of all enterprises, ecological integration will unquestionably become the development trend in the future. In recent years, Huawei, JD and other enterprises have actively participated in the AWE, but they are not aimed at nothing.

While AI and smart life are the main showcase for this AWE, many other highlights are also broadening the vision of home appliances & consumer electronics industry for future. The utilization of aerospace technology on home appliances, the mature application of 8K technology, the practice of user co-creation mode on Bugu brand, fierce competition between COLMO and Casarte... Countless visions and concepts of these enterprises can find their positions to show themselves on the AWE.

AWE is like a kaleidoscope, from which you can see every side of the colorful industry of home appliances and consumer electronics. Meanwhile, AWE also plays as a mirror, from which we can capture the glimpse of future life.