Neglected large home appliances: Roborock, Dreame, and Ecovacs scramble for a share of the market | Hardcore Krypton Analysis

Author | Huang Nan

Editor | Yuan Silai

After officially announcing its entry into the large home appliance market, Dreame reserved an 800-square-meter exhibition area at AWE 2025. In addition to cleaning appliances such as robot vacuum cleaners and floor scrubbers, it also showcased its first air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, kitchen appliances and other intelligent products.

This is another expansion of Dreame's original business territory after it was reported last year that the company was recruiting a team to prepare for car manufacturing.

In addition to robot vacuum cleaners, vacuum cleaners and floor scrubbers, Roborock also showcased its washing and drying set for the first time at the event. It features an integrated door and screen design and is the world's first full-screen washing machine. Tineco launched its embodied cooking product, "Shiwan Tiangong". Ecovacs also displayed its lawn mowing robot at its venue.

In the past two years, the intelligent cleaning market has gradually entered a stage of stock competition. According to market reports from Zhongyikang, IDC and other institutions, in the first half of 2023, the market size of robot vacuum cleaners in China decreased by 0.6% year-on-year. From Q4 2023 to Q4 2024, the global market still showed a growth trend, with the shipment volume increasing from 5.5 million units to 5.9 million units, but the growth rate slowed down significantly.

On the one hand, the core user group has been basically covered. In order to compete for market share, manufacturers have fallen into price competition. The problems of homogeneous technology and single function of robot vacuum cleaners have not been solved in time, and there is a lack of differentiated advantages. The fierce competition during the same period has also intensified the market's sluggishness. As user needs upgrade, the personalized preferences and intelligent trends have not been met, resulting in low repurchase willingness.

Against this background, expanding the business territory and increasing revenue by exploring diversified battlefields is undoubtedly one of the most effective strategies for enterprises.

Dreame is neither the first nor the last company to do so.

A Bigger Business

The home appliance industry has always been a highly competitive red ocean, with intense competition. However, for a long time, some intelligent home appliances have been in an awkward situation. Although they claim to have intelligent functions, the actual user experience is far from meeting the needs of users, and their practicality is greatly reduced.

Take intelligent refrigerators as an example. Currently, some products have many experience shortcomings. Their screen operation interfaces are complex, and users need to spend a lot of time and energy to figure out various functions, with cumbersome operation processes. The voice command recognition is affected by the noisy environment in the kitchen, resulting in a significant decrease in the accuracy of interaction and a slow response speed. The much-anticipated food recognition function is also disappointing, with low recognition accuracy and frequent misjudgments, leading to food waste.

After these problems were exposed one after another, there have been many disputes on various social platforms about topics such as "Is an intelligent refrigerator a waste of money?" and "Is it necessary to spend several times the price to buy a high-end intelligent refrigerator?"

In contrast, the technology of small cleaning appliances such as robot vacuum cleaners and floor scrubbers has gradually matured, but their market growth space has also become limited.

According to Statista data, the penetration rate of robot vacuum cleaners in China was only 6% in 2024. Although users' awareness of them is gradually increasing, the rigidity of demand still needs to be strengthened. Compared with the extremely high penetration rate of white goods, there is an obvious gap, which also reflects that the difficulty of expanding the cleaning appliance market is increasing.

In comparison, the white goods market is larger. According to Aowei Cloud Network data, the retail sales of all categories of home appliances (excluding 3C) in China reached 907.1 billion yuan in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 6.4%.

Mature industries often have some drawbacks. On the one hand, industry giants, relying on their strong strength, have absolute say in the market, but their investment in technology R & D is relatively limited, resulting in serious product homogenization and difficulty in effectively meeting the in - depth needs of users. On the other hand, the impact of channel changes makes it difficult for enterprises to adapt to the dynamic changes in the market and quickly adjust their strategies to keep up with the transformation rhythm.

This undoubtedly provides an opportunity for intelligent cleaning enterprises such as Dreame and Roborock to enter the market.

The on - site of Roborock's booth at AWE 2025 (Source/Enterprise)

As the popularity of the cleaning appliance market represented by robot vacuum cleaners has dropped sharply and consumption has become flat, in this context, manufacturers are seeking new business growth breakthroughs by expanding product categories, application scenarios and business tracks to reduce their dependence on a single category. This is an inevitable choice for enterprises to improve their risk - resistance ability.

Reusability of Technology and Channels

The large home appliance market, where Dreame has placed its bets, may seem like a completely different track from intelligent cleaning, but in essence, it is the reuse of the underlying technical architecture in different scenarios.

Previously, Dreame's main business consisted of four major intelligent cleaning segments: robot vacuum cleaners, floor scrubbers, wireless vacuum cleaners and high - speed hair dryers. From a R & D perspective, it is based on the migration and expansion of core technologies such as high - speed digital motors, intelligent algorithms, fluid mechanics and aerodynamics in the application end.

Dreame robot vacuum cleaner (Source/Enterprise)

Take the motor as an example. The motor is almost the core power source for the operation of all home appliances and can be reused in multiple scenarios and product categories. Dreame is the world's first enterprise to break through 200,000 revolutions per minute in motor speed. In the cleaning scenario, a high - speed and powerful motor can drive the equipment to generate a strong air flow to suck away dirt on the ground and furniture surfaces, keeping the home environment clean. For example, the suction power of Dreame's vacuum cleaner Z50 Station reaches 350AW, which can deeply clean stubborn stains such as oil stains and coffee stains and handle various dust removal scenarios.

In the cooking scenario, the high - speed digital motor can be used in the improvement of range hoods. Traditional range hood design needs to solve the problem of how to balance air volume and noise. Increasing the air volume can enhance the suction power but will increase the noise, while reducing the noise may sacrifice the suction power. In contrast, Dreame's high - speed digital motor has a higher rotation speed, which means that the range hood can still output sufficient air volume while maintaining a small volume and low air duct resistance to meet the demand for kitchen fume exhaust.

Dreame has also introduced the robotic arm solution of its robot vacuum cleaner into the design of air conditioners. In response to the problem that traditional air conditioners can only supply air in a single direction and with a single wind force up, down, left and right, Dreame has installed a robotic arm on the air conditioner and re - adapted the air conditioner's structure and motor characteristics to increase the freedom of air supply and achieve zoned air control.

These technologies have been verified in Dreame's intelligent cleaning products in the past and are also reusable in the home appliance field. They can be transferred to the R & D of products such as refrigerators, air conditioners and washing machines, reducing R & D costs, shortening the R & D cycle and accelerating the product iteration process.

The on - site of Dreame's exhibition at AWE 2025 (Source/Enterprise)

On the other hand, compared with intelligent cleaning tools, large home appliances have a higher unit price, often costing thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan. Users are more cautious when purchasing and tend to compare products from different brands and have on - site experiences before making a decision. In addition, after - sales services such as installation, testing and maintenance are also involved. In this regard, Dreame also has a mature sales channel and after - sales service system that can be reused.

According to official data, Dreame has more than 5,500 offline stores, covering more than 100 countries and regions. In addition to entering large - scale chain stores such as Walmart, Carrefour, Suning E - commerce and Gome Electrical Appliances, it has also reached cooperation with many overseas mainstream channel providers such as MSD, Boulanger and Coolblue.

Reusing technologies and expanding to more product categories can create a mutually beneficial effect among R & D advantages, product capabilities and market channel accumulation.

Affected by national subsidies and other factors, in the past year, the home appliance market showed a good trend of increasing both sales volume and price. In the first three quarters of 2024, the retail scale of the home appliance market exceeded the peak in 2019. Considering the 10 - to 12 - year replacement cycle of large home appliances, the world has now entered a critical period of the home appliance replacement wave. Coupled with green consumption policies, the market space is significant.

With the growth window opened, new entrants have also seen the opportunity to gain a foothold in the market and seize market share.