Smart High-end Turning into Development Trend of Home Appliance Industry

Even in the face of various unfavorable factors, the home appliance industry in China still has bright spots in 2012. The penetration rate of the smart TV market has further increased. The new air-conditioner refrigerant technology has begun to be applied, and the refrigerator and washing machine products have advanced to the high end. Year-end, year-end and year-end, recalling that in 2012, the domestic appliance industry was struggling ahead in a market that was fully competitive and constantly updated. Looking forward to 2013, accelerating industrial transformation and upgrading, optimizing product structure, and enhancing overall competitiveness will become an inevitable choice for the domestic appliance industry.

TV intelligentization trend

Just like the replacement of mobile phones from smart phones to smart phones, the intelligent development of television has become an accepted trend in the industry. With the development of smart TVs, the issues faced by TV manufacturers will be more than pure hardware. The software conditions such as content, applications and derivative business models of smart TVs are even more important.

At the 2012 China International Panel Display Cooperation and Innovation Development Conference and the International Smart Display Development Annual Summit Forum held recently, Hao Yabin, vice president of the China Electronics Industry Association, said that intelligent display is now the mainstream trend, but also represents the future Direction of development. Smart TV is not just a color TV category, but an entire industrial chain and ecological chain, which is also its core value. With the development of the smart display industry and the gradual deepening and expansion of industrial cooperation, the boundaries between hardware, software, content, and services will be broken, and smart display industries will appear to be more widely used by service providers such as applications, video, transmission, and terminals. Infiltration integration model. In the future, the development of this industry will no longer be a breakthrough of a certain technology, but will be the optimal allocation and integration of cross-field resources, and it will be the construction, improvement, and balanced development of the overall industrial chain and ecosystem.

From August to September 2012, new products based on smart TVs were launched intensively, covering not only the latest intelligent technologies such as cloud TV, dual channel, gesture recognition, voice control, dual-core, and 4K, but also smart TVs from display technology and application technology. Once again, the industry is undergoing innovation and upgrading, which makes the technology of smart TV products more diversified, product structures more rational, and smart applications more human-oriented, accelerating the market promotion and popularization of smart TVs. With the deepening of intelligence, smart TVs will bring great changes to the pattern and business model of the color TV industry.

The core part of a smart TV is content. As early as 2008, smart TVs launched by domestic color TV manufacturers such as TCLmi TV, Skyworth Cool Open, Haier Card, and Changhong Music Education were mostly Internet TVs controlled by color TV manufacturers. This type of Internet TV uses LCD TV + network interface + Thunder, Sohu and other online video content, is a closed product. By the second half of 2010, Skyworth, China Smart Alliance and other manufacturers and agencies have adopted the Android platform to launch smart TVs. Based on an open platform, they have imported third-party web content. The content of smart TV products has gradually shifted from closed to open.

At present, domestic color TV companies generally work closely with third-party content providers, such as Hua Digital Media, which has been implanted in many branded TVs. In addition, in September 2012, Konka partnered with China Network Television (CNTV) to provide users with 3D HDTV, interactive entertainment, family photo albums, video calls, TV shopping, multi-screen interactive and other services.

Terminals infiltrate upstream, Skyworth teamed up with Ulead Bullock, Hisense and CNTV, and Huada cooperated; TCL and Changhong teamed up to make “Huanhua”; upstream penetrated downstream, BesTV made “boxes,” LeTV developed Smart TV plans, Tencent and TCL has jointly launched Zhiping iCE SCREEN; IT companies also do television, Lenovo launches smart TVs, Google has TV systems, and Apple also has TV programs. Peng Jianfeng, director of the research and consulting department of the China Electronics and Video Industry Association, believes that cross-border integration will occur in the next few years and televisions will be redefined. The focus of TV competition is shifting from hardware to software.

High growth in the air-conditioning market has abruptly ended

Under the stimulation of policies, the domestic air-conditioning industry experienced rapid growth in 2010 and 2011. However, because the policies ended in 2012, the high growth in the air-conditioning market also came to an abrupt end in 2012.

At the 2012 China Air-Conditioning Industry Development Summit Forum, Wang Lei, deputy director of the China Household Electrical Appliances Association, said that in the cold year of the air-conditioning industry (August 2011 to August 2012), the domestic market sales fell by more than 20%, while the exports fell by 3.6%. The domestic market and the international market have fallen at the same time. For the first time in nearly 10 years, such a severe situation has emerged.

From the cold year of 2010 to the cold year of 2012, the overall sales situation of the domestic air-conditioning market has undergone fundamental changes. The data shows that in the cold year of 2010, the sales volume of the domestic air-conditioning market increased by 31.45% year-on-year, and the sales increased by 24.13% year-on-year. In the cold year of 2011, the sales volume of air-conditioners in major cities in China increased by 20.45% year-on-year, and the year-on-year sales growth reached 28.64%. In the cold year of 2012, under the influence of market pressure, inventory pressure, poor convergence of policies and other factors, the domestic air-conditioning market sales volume fell by 25.12% year-on-year, with sales volume down 19.36% year-on-year, and the dramatic growth has abruptly ended.

In the overall downturn of the air-conditioning market, the relative growth in inverter air conditioners may be one of the few bright spots in the 2012 cold year. The data shows that in the cold year of 2012, the proportion of sales of domestic inverter air conditioners increased from 38.45% in the cold year of 2011 to 47.3%, and the proportion of sales increased from 44.74% to 52.7%, continuing to maintain the momentum of gradual increase in sales ratio since the cold year of 2010. . At the same time, the fact that the sales ratio is higher than the sales volume also shows that the basic benefits of inverter air conditioner market are still maintained.

The steady growth of inverter air conditioners benefits from the promotion and popularization of key air conditioner companies. Since the cold year of 2010, domestic mainstream air conditioner companies have begun to make efforts in the field of inverter air conditioners, and the overall sales scale has undergone fundamental changes. In this process, Midea, Gree, and Haier have played an important role in promoting. With several years of promotion, inverter air conditioners have become a very important part of domestic air conditioning products, and will also become one of the most competitive categories of manufacturers in 2013-2014.

From the performance of the cold-air-conditioning market in 2012, the environment in which the industry is located is already quite severe. It is expected that the overall market environment in the cold year of 2013 will not be significantly improved, external environmental pressure will still accompany the development process of the air-conditioning industry, and it is particularly critical for production companies to further enhance their anti-strike capabilities. In this regard, experts believe that the current situation, the air-conditioning industry can not reproduce the rapid growth in previous years, the industry is at a stage of stable development, the company must continue to increase the transformation and upgrading, product structure adjustment efforts and speed to a stable enterprise Comprehensive strength to meet the challenges of the future, at the same time should avoid unnecessary price war on the adverse effects of the transformation and upgrading of the air-conditioning industry.

Ice wash products to high-end transformation

Looking at the home appliance market in 2012, the active performance of high-end products for refrigerators and washing machines is particularly prominent. According to data from the 2012 “Twelve Golden Week” monitoring data released by China Household Electrical Appliances Market Research Company, Yikang, the retail sales of high-end energy-saving products such as door refrigerators and drum washing machines increased by 78.6% and 56.8% year-on-year. It can be seen that high-end will become the main driving force for the growth of the ice-washing market.

In 2012, refrigerator companies collectively launched high-end markets. In terms of product structure, the development trend of 2012 high-end refrigerators has become the norm. For the primary and secondary markets, large capacity, frost-free, high energy efficiency, high freshness, stylish appearance and intelligence are the direction of new product development. Haier’s main “freezer-free” three-door refrigerators are still strongly impacting the high-end refrigerator market; Midea has successively launched nearly 20 high-end new products in the four major series of Van Di Luo to further improve its overall layout in the high-end refrigerator field. At the same time, targeted development of high-end products with high performance-to-price ratio for the tertiary and tertiary markets and township and village markets has also become the direction of the company's development.

The key research and development direction of washing machine products mainly includes six aspects: power saving, water saving, green environmental protection, intelligentization, healthy washing, and new laundry. Among them, healthy washing has become a new hot spot in the industry in 2012. In addition to ensuring core competencies through technical input, in the long run, building brand competitiveness is also a task that companies need to do. Judging from the characteristics of brand competition in 2012, the first group army brand is relatively fixed. The structure of the top three brands for the two domestic brands and one foreign brand has not changed, indicating the brand's influence on the market.

Industry sources also pointed out that China's high-end home appliance market has just begun. At this stage, the domestic high-end home appliances business environment has not yet formed, the number of brand stores is small, the market area, consumer groups, product refinement are still to be improved, high-end home appliance brands also need to further expand Channels, closer to consumers. It is reported that at the China Household Appliances Expo held in Shanghai in March 2013, a separate high-end international high-end appliance exhibition area will be opened. This exhibition area will take the form of a sub-exhibition. A number of high-end home appliance brands will bring their internationally renowned high-end home appliance products to debut. Bringing consumers a new luxury experience in high-end appliances.

Looking forward to 2013, policies such as energy-saving subsidies and price ladders will inevitably drive consumer demand for energy-saving products. At the same time, consumers in the first and second tier cities will usher in new replacement nodes as the refrigerator and washing machine technologies develop. With the acceleration of urbanization in China, the demand for refrigerator products will continue to increase. On the other hand, as the country raises standards for major and specialized spare parts for washing machines, some SMEs will face technical and cost problems. Therefore, the gap between the various brands of the washing machine industry will increase, and the polarization will gradually form, which will have a far-reaching impact on the brand pattern of the washing machine industry.