Author | Huang Yu, Chen Yingyi

Recently, HAIER SMARTHOME's Board of Directors Chairman and CEO Zhou Yunjie became popular after being seen with Lei Jun in the NPC representative channel during the Two Sessions. He responded by stating that new media accounts would be launched by the end of March or early April. On March 21, Zhou Yunjie released his first Douyin video as promised, which briefly topped the trending searches.

During this new wave of AI that has emerged over the past two years, HAIER SMARTHOME, one of the 'three giants of white goods,' has been relatively low-key, but it is now firing on all cylinders, aiming to leverage this massive influx of traffic to further capture consumers' minds about AI home appliances.

In addition to showcasing AI home appliances at the 2025 China Household Appliances and Consumer Electronics Expo (AWE2025), the day before AWE2025's opening, at the HAIER SMARTHOME 2025 Ecological Conference, HAIER SMARTHOME also unveiled its latest achievements from a decade-long layout in the smart home field—the AI Eye series of black technology.

The development history of smart appliances primarily consists of several stages: single product networking, interconnectivity, and decision intelligence. As one progresses through the stages, the household chores that appliances can replace become more numerous. Currently, the industry has reached the 'interconnectivity' stage.

The AI Eye series of black technology seeks to endow appliances with a 'visual nerve center' akin to humans, enabling smart appliances to not only 'hear' but also 'see', thus possessing the capability to actively serve people.

This means that HAIER SMARTHOME has upgraded again and is moving from "human chores" to "no chores," leading the industry into the fourth stage of "AI highly autonomous intelligence."

Ten years ago, HAIER SMARTHOME established smart home as its Global Strategy direction. Shu Hai, Vice President of Haier Group and General Manager of HAIER SMARTHOME R&D platform, stated that today AI has become the strategic direction for HAIER SMARTHOME R&D, and the speed of AI appliance iteration needs to be accelerated to ensure continuous leadership.

Meanwhile, Shu Hai revealed that the goal of HAIER SMARTHOME is to gradually achieve "no chores."

The achievement of the goal of "no chores" currently requires two pieces of the puzzle. One is that home appliances must possess the ability to "understand things"; this time, HAIER SMARTHOME launched the "AI Eye" to ensure appliances have this capability. The other piece is to realize home chores through household service robots that can "pick up and put down" after they are able to "understand things."

It is reported that HAIER SMARTHOME is currently accelerating the R&D and layout of household service robots business to promote the early arrival of the "no chores" era.

Relying on the HAIER SMARTHOME brain and Uhome large model, at the level of smart living scenarios, HAIER SMARTHOME has enabled appliances to "see, hear, and think" through the deep application and integration of the Three Winged Bird AI scenarios in safety disposal, health management, and language interaction, achieving full scenario coverage of smart homes.

It is reported that the HAIER SMARTHOME brain has undergone training with over 10 billion units of household professional knowledge so that smart homes can move from "Internet of Everything" to "Thinking of Everything"; the Uhome large model allows smart homes to continuously learn and upgrade, thus enabling natural conversational interaction with users.

Cui Zhen, General Manager of Three Winged Bird in the China region of HAIER SMARTHOME, also revealed: "This year, we are jointly creating a distributed smart home operating system based on open-source Harmony with HiSilicon and the Open Atom Open Source Foundation. We will also continuously open and co-create with more software and Hardware service ecological partners to jointly build smart homes in the AI era."

Recently, the launch of DeepSeek has ignited the Global AI and industry sectors, and the deep integration of AI with various industries has become a reality. HAIER SMARTHOME chooses AI as its core strategy, which not only aligns with market trends but is also based on insights into user needs.

Currently, the level of intelligence in home appliances is limited, with most products still in the 'passive execution' stage, requiring users to manually operate them or provide explicit instructions to complete tasks. Meanwhile, user demand for convenience, personalization, and proactive service is growing.

To address this pain point, the enhancement of AI technology capabilities is key.

During this year's National Two Sessions, Zhou Yunjie also stated, 'Either evolve with AI or be marginalized by AI.'

HAIER SMARTHOME has also achieved good results in its smart home strategy in the past. It is reported that over the past seven years, HAIER SMARTHOME's sales in China have doubled, with a growth rate higher than its peers.

Zhao Yanfeng, Vice President of HAIER Group and General Manager of HAIER SMARTHOME in China, has also outlined the future development plan for the China region at the ecological conference, setting a series of strategic goals for four high-end brands by 2025.

Among them, the luxury brand Fishel Parker plans to build 100 top experience stores in core cities across the country, deeply engaging with the designer circle, collaborating with over 2000 large home designers; the Casarte brand focuses on expanding 440 high-end brand experience stores in first- and second-tier cities, penetrating four major user segments, leading a high-end lifestyle.

HAIER brand plans to establish 1000 AI experience stores, centered around the national policy of exchanging old for new, planning to promote 0.01 million 'Renewal Journey' events; Leader will redefine itself as an Internet ecological brand, defining quality-price ratio as good but not expensive, with an online retail target of a 70% year-on-year growth and innovating and launching 1 million explosive products.

Of course, HAIER SMARTHOME's ambitions have never been limited to China.

The Earnings Reports show that HAIER SMARTHOME's overseas business revenue has surpassed its domestic business, with overseas revenue reaching 70.824 billion yuan in the first half of 2024, accounting for 52.22% of total revenue.

In the first half of last year, HAIER SMARTHOME achieved year-on-year revenue growth of 9.9%, 12.4%, and 26.8% in the South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Middle East Africa markets, respectively.

It is worth mentioning that in July last year, HAIER SMARTHOME announced the acquisition of the South African water heater business subsidiary ESA of the Swedish Electrolux Group, further expanding its presence in the African market.

HAIER is considered the most globally effective among the "three giants of white goods."

Industrial Securities predicts that under the pull of domestic subsidy policies, HAIER SMARTHOME will achieve high growth in domestic sales, with high-end Casarte recovering; the resilience of the export brand business will be highlighted, efficiency will continue to optimize, and operations will enter an upward channel, making future globalization and high-end logic likely to continue to be realized.

HAIER SMARTHOME has now fired the first shot in "unmanned housework," but evolving alongside AI is a continuous battle, and to maintain a leading position in this field, HAIER SMARTHOME still has a long way to go.