The China Light Industry Council (CLIC) has started a process to set technological standards for smart home devices including electric appliances, locks, lighting and furniture.

CLIC said it has set up a standards working group, an expertise group, an alliance of industry associations, as well as technological, inspection, testing, certification organizations.

As the move covers a wide range of areas, the first priority will be given to key standards in connectivity among devices, human-machine interface, cloud computing platform and big data.

The process runs in three stages. From 2017-2019, standards and related organizations and mechanisms for smart manufacturing will be set. From 2019-2022, an initial system of standards for smart home-use devices will be completed. From 2022-2025, such standards will be widely used in home-use devices.

CLIC and China Household Electric Appliance Research Institute have jointly released White Paper on Application of NB-IoT Technology to Smart Home-use Electric Appliance Industries. According to the white paper, Wi-Fi modules will not be suitable for smart home application and instead, NB-IoT technology will be adopted due to low power consumption, wide-area coverage and low cost.

In the China market, total sales for smart household appliances is forecast to increase from CNY8.907 billion (US$1.34 billion) in 2016 to CNY101.5 billion in 2022.

（Source：digitimes.com）