On January 28, 2026, the Shenzhen Market Supervision Bureau and four other departments jointly issued the Three-Year Action Plan for Optimizing the Consumption Environment in Shenzhen (2026–2028). Among the series of deployments targeting the smart home industry, it has attracted widespread attention from the sector. As a city home to leading enterprises such as Huawei, Midea, and TCL, and boasting a sound electronic industry supporting ecosystem, Shenzhen has leveraged this policy as a key tool to drive the integrated development of “localization + AI”. This move not only provides a path to address the core pain points of the industry but also brings a new round of development dividends to the smart home sector, helping Shenzhen consolidate its leading position in the global smart hardware market.
Policy Guidance: Breaking Ecosystem Barriers for Industry Upgrade
Currently, the smart home market has long been plagued by the problem of “incompatible protocols and fragmented ecosystems”, leading to poor user experience and forcing enterprises into isolated competition. This policy clearly proposes to promote the in-depth integration of “OpenHarmony + Whole-House Intelligence”, breaking down ecological barriers through unified standards. Simultaneously, it encourages enterprises to accelerate the adaptation of domestic operating systems and chips, and drives the comprehensive integration of furniture, televisions, door locks, and other home products with AI. These initiatives align with the national strategy of technological self-reliance and self-improvement, and by building a “large home” ecological system, they will enable consumers to enjoy a more convenient and intelligent lifestyle, laying a solid foundation for the standardized and scalable development of the industry.
At present, the smart home industry is in a golden era of large-scale popularization. The global market size is expected to exceed $1 trillion by 2025, and China’s market penetration rate is projected to reach 45%, making it a core driver of consumption upgrading and industrial transformation. However, behind the rapid development of the industry, issues such as high reliance on foreign core technologies and inter-device interoperability barriers have always constrained the high-quality development of the sector.
Urgent Need for Localization: Avoiding Supply Chain Risks
As a core application scenario of the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, the autonomous controllability of the underlying software and hardware of smart homes directly relates to industrial security and consumer rights and interests. For a long time, most Chinese smart home enterprises have relied on imported chips and foreign operating systems, facing risks of supply chain disruptions and being put at a disadvantage in terms of technical standards and data security. The experience of Ningbo Duya Electromechanics serves as a typical example. As a world-leading manufacturer of window and door motors, it once faced a production halt crisis when the delivery time of imported chips surged from 1 month to 36 months. It was only by replacing its chips with domestic alternatives that the company overcame the predicament, achieving a 15% year-on-year increase in output value and an 18% growth in exports in the first half of the year.
The introduction of Shenzhen’s new policy is not an accident but a strategic layout that aligns with the laws of industrial development. It explicitly promotes the in-depth integration of “OpenHarmony + Whole-House Intelligence”, covering all categories of devices including furniture, televisions, door locks, and sweeping robots, providing a clear roadmap and policy support for enterprises to adapt to domestic software and hardware. Nationally, the replacement of imported technologies with domestic alternatives has become an inevitable trend in industrial development. Only by proactively embracing policy guidance and accelerating the adaptation process can enterprises seize opportunities in market competition and avoid operational risks caused by fluctuations in the external environment.
Technological Breakthroughs: Laying a Solid Foundation for Local Adaptation
The technological breakthroughs in domestic operating systems and chips have provided a solid foundation for the adaptation work of smart home enterprises. In the chip sector, in June 2025, China released the first AI-perception dedicated chip for the home appliance industry, adopting a fully domestic dual-core heterogeneous architecture. Its core components and design tools are 100% domestically sourced, reducing power consumption by 30% and increasing response speed by 50% compared with traditional chips, cutting device response time to the millisecond level. Smart home SoC chips from companies such as Amlogic, ROCKCHIP, and Allwinner Technology have achieved large-scale applications. Among them, Amlogic’s smart home chip sales increased by over 50% year-on-year in the first quarter, and Allwinner Technology’s net profit rose by 834.56% year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2024, demonstrating the strong market competitiveness of domestic chips.
In terms of operating systems, the ecological layout of OpenHarmony continues to improve. Its distributed architecture is naturally suited for whole-house intelligence scenarios, enabling seamless collaboration among devices of different brands and categories. Currently, core enterprises such as Runhe Software and Softtek have built mature OpenHarmony ecosystem service systems. Multiple terminal manufacturers in Shenzhen have launched pilot programs for the adaptation of “domestic chips + OpenHarmony OS”. Enterprises such as ARROW Home and Skyworth Digital have become the first batch of OpenHarmony smart partners, realizing the commercialization of intelligent products. The collaboration between Wuqi Chip and Anker Innovations has extended from smart wearables to the smart home field. Its Wi-Fi 6 chip, with its advantages of high integration and low power consumption, provides stable wireless connection support for smart devices, confirming the feasibility of the coordinated adaptation of domestic software and hardware.
The autonomous controllability of the smart home industry is crucial to the long-term development of every enterprise, and even more so to the security and stability of the national digital economy. Guided by policies, supported by technology, and driven by the joint efforts of the entire industry, it is believed that more and more smart home enterprises will accelerate the adaptation of domestic operating systems and chips, launching more “flagship products” that combine technical advantages with market competitiveness.
