IDC China's Smart Home Equipment Market Quarterly Tracking Report, the first quarter of 2021 shows that in the first quarter of 2021, China's smart home equipment market shipments were 46.99 million units, a year-on-year increase of 27.7%. 

The disappearance of the epidemic has caused a significant rebound in the market compared to the same period last year, but each category has been affected by different levels from the upstream supply chain, and growth is under pressure. Upstream supply pressure is expected to continue during the year. IDC predicts that China's smart home equipment market will ship 250 million units in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 21.1%.

China's smart home market is currently undergoing an upgrade and adjustment period. In terms of products, all categories are actively upgrading and expanding functions, connections, and scene applications; at the platform level, the access rate of interconnection platforms and voice platforms has reached a high level, and the growth rate has slowed down. The upgrade of China's smart home market requires unified development, but there is still a long way to go to reach a unified standard, and the foundation for cooperation between domestic top players has not yet been fully formed.

On the one hand, the core software capabilities of domestic mobile phone manufacturers other than platform connection are still in their infancy. The hardware ecology is an important moat in the smart home market and the overall smart terminal market. The introduction of unified connection standards cannot be transformed into operations for them. Advantages at the system or other software level; on the other hand, domestic Internet manufacturers are still in the process of expanding the boundaries of smart home hardware. There is a lot of room for product development and market expansion. The focus of competition has not yet completed the shift to software services. To a certain extent, the model hinders Internet giants from moving toward cooperation in device interconnection. 

Therefore, neither mobile phone manufacturers nor Internet manufacturers can reach a unified connection standard in the short term.

IDC China analyst Liu Yun believes: "The core of smart home is service, and the fragmented ecological connection has blocked the upgrade of the smart home market from equipment to service, and has also restricted the pace of market growth. The unification process of China's smart home market without the active participation of manufacturers, all kinds of players should actively improve software capabilities, enrich the application ecosystem, build core competitiveness based on software services, and lay out market competitive advantages under unified standards."