Huawei HarmonyOS Home, enabling the whole-house intelligence to evolve to the "NEXT" Level.

On November 26, 2024, "Future Home" has a new model.

At the Huawei Mate Brand Gala, Huawei presented the public with such an imagination of "Future Home": You can use Huawei's self-developed "Room All-round Command" intelligent central control screen MINI to command six subsystems such as audio-visual entertainment, shading, heating, cooling, and fresh air on a small four-inch screen; You can also adjust the lighting system to "Sleep Aid" or "Wake Up" and other modes through voice interaction, and enjoy the rest time in a healthy and comfortable atmosphere; When you go to any space in the home, the AI Ultra-Sensing Sensor automatically senses your movement trajectory, and the lights automatically turn on, closely following you all the way.

Illustration: Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia Intelligent Central Control Screen MINI

This is not a regular new product launch. At the event site, He Gang, CEO of Huawei Terminal BG, announced that "Huawei Whole-House Intelligence" has been upgraded to a new brand "Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia".

As is well known, "Full-Scenario Smart Life" is the core strategy of Huawei, covering five major scenarios: smart office, audio-visual entertainment, sports and health, smart home, and smart travel. As Huawei builds a more comprehensive pan-smart home brand, the new "Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia" is an important part of these five scenarios.

The brand name change has revealed the core information: The new Huawei Whole-House Intelligence will achieve a deeper integration with the Hongmeng system and the Hongmeng ecosystem.

Not long ago, on October 22, 2024, HarmonyOS NEXT was released, which is also regarded as the biggest upgrade since the birth of the Hongmeng system. And Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia is the first major brand upgrade within Huawei Group after the upgrade of HarmonyOS NEXT.

Following HarmonyOS NEXT, "Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia" is also about to open the "NEXT" Level of Huawei Whole-House Intelligence.

1. The Smart Home in Dreams is on the Eve of Becoming Popular

When hearing the concept of whole-house intelligence, perhaps everyone's mind will come up with different scenes and intentions: Before going home, you can ask the intelligent butler in the car to turn on the air conditioner at home, so that you can enjoy a pleasant room temperature as soon as you get home; At home, you can simply ask the intelligent butler to give food suggestions based on the food stored in the refrigerator - at the same time, the kitchen utensils on the intelligent stove will also automatically start cooking...

It can be said that the whole-house intelligence market is huge and can extend to unlimited scenarios, but the industry is also very challenging, because the technical standards are not clear, conceptual marketing is prevalent, the degree of intelligence is limited, and the industrial chain remains at the level of smart single products without extending to the downstream home decoration, and the market behavior remains at the cognitive level without being fully transformed into consumption.

However, in the past two years, with the east wind of the large model blowing to the smart hardware market, the technological and scenario breakthroughs in the aspects of intelligence, interconnection, and space implementation of smart home have made the consumer market really start to boil.

IDC reports show that it is expected that the average number of smart home devices per household will reach 6 in 2025. The questionnaire statistics of iResearch also point to the recovery of user demand for whole-house intelligence - Among users who are willing to create an intelligent home, 60.7% of users have a clear demand for the scene linkage intelligent control and active personalized service of whole-house intelligence; 24.1% of users expect the Internet of Things of home appliances.

But to expand the whole-house intelligence market and continuously lead the consumption concept of users, the industry needs the leadership of top students.

Huawei is the leader in the whole-house intelligence track. According to third-party data, Huawei Whole-House Intelligence brand awareness monthly data topped the list for two months in 2024; In the first half of 2023 and the first half of 2024, the share of Huawei brand in the fine decoration smart home system was ranked first.

Of course, Huawei's more than 20 years of cultivation in the fields of mobile phones, chips, and cars makes the "Huawei" brand quite persuasive in any track.

However, Huawei's leading position in the whole-house intelligence track is not only due to the brand aura.

First, let's look at the strategic path. Many brands that use "whole-house intelligence" as a selling point often start from accumulating the number of SKUs of smart single products, emphasizing the intelligence of single products. Eventually, different smart terminals disperse the user's attention in the same space, resulting in the fragmentation of the ecological experience.

And Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia's "1 + 2 + N" solution itself has high barriers and is not replicable. "1" refers to the intelligent host, "2" refers to the intelligent central control family and the Smart Life APP, and "N" refers to ten subsystems. This means that since the beginning of the layout of whole-house intelligence, Huawei has emphasized the overall planning and interconnection of the whole-house ecology and the integration of experience.

Illustration: Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia's "1 + 2 + N" Solution

Next, let's look at the hard power. On the one hand, a strong industrial integration ability is the "admission ticket" to the whole-house intelligence track. Currently, based on the continuously expanding Hongmeng Zhilian ecosystem, Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia has more than 3,000 partners.

On the other hand, around "interconnection", the brand must establish core technologies. Whether it is connection technology or interaction technology, Huawei has its "exclusive secrets". For example, Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia pioneered the application of industrial-grade PLC technology in home interconnection, providing a 99.99% stable connection for the smart home ecosystem, and also setting off a "PLC imitation craze" in the industry; In the interaction level, as a supplement to mobile phone interaction, Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia has developed a rich variety of interaction forms such as intelligent central control screens, intelligent MINI Pro, and intelligent voice, making technological innovations and usability breakthroughs in software and hardware and interaction logic.

Illustration: Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia can achieve a stable connection between devices

Finally, let's look at the depth of sales and service. The service chain of whole-house intelligence extends from upstream home appliances to downstream home decoration design. Compared with the one-time sales model of single smart home products, the sales and service of whole-house intelligence is a marathon that lasts for several months or even years.

As of June 2024, Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia has more than 300 offline authorized stores nationwide. These stores not only provide sales and experience of whole-house intelligent products, but also include many intelligent products related to the home. These stores will also become the "capillaries" of brand upgrading, providing a solid guarantee for opening up the online-offline and from design to long-term maintenance chain.

With the east wind of demand explosion outside and the strength of accumulated potential inside, this brand upgrade means that Huawei, the top student in the whole-house intelligence field, is entering the next stage of defining the category and achieving scale.

2. Sharing the "Most Powerful Brain" for the Whole House and the Whole Industry

What is the "Future House" in Huawei's mind? At the just-ended Huawei Mate Brand Gala, Huawei gave the answer.

From "Huawei Whole-House Intelligence" to "Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia", just from the biggest change in the brand name, we can see the key elements of Huawei's construction of whole-house intelligence: deeper linking of the brand ecosystem and deeper integration with the Hongmeng system.

Even though the development has entered the fast lane, the whole-house intelligence industry is still in the early stage - which means that the whole-house intelligence ecosystem needs more players to join in and jointly make the cake bigger.

The so-called underlying system not only plays the role of an ecological entrance, but also is the base for making the whole-house intelligence cake bigger. Judging from the number of smart hardware categories included in Huawei's whole-house intelligence field alone, currently, the SKUs of more than 3,000 partners have reached more than 6,000 - and these devices will also bring greater imagination space to the interaction and scenarios of whole-house intelligence. At the same time, for third-party cooperative brands and developers, Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia is a channel to enter the smart home track and seek market opportunities.

In addition to providing the "brain" of the product interconnection ecosystem - a powerful underlying operating system like Hongmeng, another core of whole-house intelligence is the real "intelligence", which can not only respond to everything, but also "understand you" to meet the personalized needs of users.

Huawei defines the evolution of the "Spatial Intelligent Entity" into five different stages: From low to high, they are tool, assistant, expert, partner, and avatar. From tool to assistant is the main evolution mode in the past ten years, and the industry has now reached the "expert" stage.

To become the "partner" or even the "avatar" of users and meet the personalized living needs of users, an AI "brain" with strong multimodal perception ability, superb semantic understanding ability, and good memory is essential.

Overall, the intelligent control mode of most smart home products on the market currently is mainly reflected in the need for people to actively issue voice commands or manually operate to run the program.

"High-Order Intelligent Sensing" is the direction of the evolution of Huawei AI intelligent base after the brand upgrade. This means that whole-house intelligence has begun to evolve from passive mechanical response to the stage of intelligent autonomous service.

Huawei AI intelligent base currently covers technical systems such as voice/language large models and the whole-house layout of AI sensing. For example, through deep learning and natural language processing technology, Huawei is expected to achieve intelligent adaptation in the lighting system, liberating the user's hands and automatically adjusting the light to meet the user's personalized needs in different environments and scenarios.

Illustration: Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia Birthday Theme Scene

Ultimately, this intelligent AI brain can be shared to all smart home devices in the ecosystem based on the Hongmeng system for "whole-house" and "integrated" intelligent iteration.

Centered around the ecological expansion of Hongmeng and the sharing of AI capabilities, Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia is taking the lead in setting an example for the industry.

3. Becoming the Base of a "Good House"

Upgrading from a product line to a unique brand means that Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia needs to have the ability to independently generate blood and create value while having more resources invested.

The creation of a smart life is a difficult and long-term battle. Whether it is the integration and iteration of fundamental technologies such as AI model capabilities and sensor connections, or the expansion of the ecosystem and the market, it requires continuous resource investment.

As part of Huawei's full-scenario smart life strategy, 36Kr learned that Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia will plan for greater investment, stronger information, and teams within the company.

In terms of building a deeper sales and service team and system, Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia has also established a set of standards. Different from mobile phones, cars, and TVs that are mainly for To C and To B, the sales and service of whole-house intelligence combines the characteristics of To B and To C: At the To B level, sales and service need to have the sales and design delivery capabilities with solutions as the core; At the To C level, sales and service must also meet the differentiated experience of consumers.

Compared with the sales idea of smart single products, increasing investment and achieving "the ultimate" is the requirement of Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia for sales and service: Exploring needs and customizing solutions, the cycle is extended from 10 minutes to 3 months; On-site delivery, the cycle is extended from 10 minutes to 9 months; And customer service is extended from 1 year to 10 years.

At the same time, as the backing of the sales and service system, it is expected that by the end of this year, the number of offline authorized stores of Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia will exceed 400.

Increasing investment is the manifestation of Huawei's strategic determination in the layout of whole-house intelligence, and as the incubation result, Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia also needs to prove its value to the group and even the entire industry.

For a brand, the excellent standard is to make each category the top in the industry, while the great standard is the ability to define the category.

Due to the generation gap in the development of the smart industry, most of the current whole-house intelligence industry standards are established by European, American, and overseas brands. These brands are aimed at high-end mansion scenarios that are in line with the living habits of European and American users, and are not suitable for Chinese consumers whose main living and working scenarios are flats.

With the continuous maturity of solutions and the addition of more categories to the Hongmeng ecosystem, Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia can already provide products in more price ranges, and the solutions are gradually expanding from high-end mansions to flat-floor hardcover improvements, and the landing scenarios are also expanding from residences and hotels to health care, office and other sections, creating an integrated intelligent space that is more suitable for Chinese people's living and working needs at different stages and in different scenarios.

Illustration: Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia's Study and Office Scenes

It is worth mentioning that with the brand upgrade, "High-Intelligence Atmosphere" and "Aesthetics" will also become the brand tone and design concept of Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia.

In the traditional whole-house intelligence industry, most only care about providing capabilities and equipment, while ignoring the aesthetics and design that the "home" as a highly emotional, highly personalized, and highly private space needs.

And "beauty", whether for upstream smart home brands or the downstream real estate industry, is an important market increment. From the demand side, the data shows that the hardcover rate of top real estate is rapidly increasing, and it is expected to reach 80% in the next four years; At the same time, the number of smart single products purchased by real estate hardcover houses is increasing rapidly, and the supporting rate of some single products has reached 70%.

In the track, Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia is one of the few brands that deeply penetrates the design link of the industrial chain. Through holding offline designer activities such as the "Huawei Whole-House Intelligence Design Competition", Huawei Hongmeng Zhijia will allow designers to be on the front line, master the intelligent home.