Lefen follows DJI into the fray as the smart cleaning market descends into chaos. Is the home robot the endgame?

According to a report by Hard Kr, Laifen has confirmed its entry into the floor scrubber industry, with the person in charge coming from DJI. "This business has been ongoing for at least half a year and is a project with extremely high internal confidentiality."

Coincidentally, DJI officially entered the intelligent cleaning market in August this year, launching its first series of floor sweeping robots, the ROMO series. The combination of these two events has sparked speculation from the outside world.

DJI is synonymous with the drone field, while Laifen is a new player in the beauty technology field. This year, these two companies "crossed over" into the intelligent cleaning field, intensifying the competition in this already crowded new track.

DJI ROMO P floor sweeping robot (photographed by Lei Technology)

The intelligent cleaning track is crowded, with over a thousand floor scrubber models

Data from Aowei Cloud Network shows that in 2024, the sales volume of China's cleaning appliance industry reached 42.3 billion yuan (a year-on-year increase of 24.4%), with a retail volume of 30.35 million units (a year-on-year increase of 22.8%), and an average price per unit of 1,394 yuan. In terms of growth rate, cleaning appliances performed remarkably in the entire home appliance market. In terms of scale, the annual market size of cleaning appliances exceeded 40 billion yuan, ranking as the sixth largest home appliance category after air conditioners (207.1 billion yuan), refrigerators (143.4 billion yuan), color TVs (127.1 billion yuan), washing machines (100.4 billion yuan), and small kitchen appliances (60.9 billion yuan).

The wave of intelligence and technology sweeping through the cleaning appliance category is the key reason for the industry to regain high growth. Therefore, this category has also gained a more popular new name - "intelligent cleaning". With the emergence of more "highly autonomous and intelligent" products, the intelligent cleaning field has also become the core implementation scenario for the early application of "home robots".

Currently, intelligent cleaning robots for household use mainly include floor sweeping robots, floor scrubbing robots, and window cleaning robots.

Roborock G30 Space Explorer Edition floor sweeping robot (photographed at the IFA 2025 by Lei Technology)

Floor sweeping robots, due to being the earliest to develop in the market and having the highest level of technological maturity and user recognition, are currently the absolute mainstream in the household intelligent cleaning robot market. So much so that both the subsequent floor mopping and sweeping robots and the newer floor scrubbing robots are currently included in this broad category. The floor scrubber category, which is currently on par with floor sweeping robots and vacuum cleaners, includes traditional floor scrubbers and intelligent floor scrubbers.

In the first half of 2025, the domestic market size of floor sweeping robots was 9.8 billion yuan, that of floor scrubbers was 8 billion yuan, that of vacuum cleaners was 2.8 billion yuan, and that of window cleaning robots was 700 million yuan. In terms of the category penetration rate in the domestic market (2024 data), the most traditional vacuum cleaners had a penetration rate of 13.5%, the most technologically advanced floor sweeping robots had a penetration rate of 5.5%, and the floor scrubbers in between had only a 3.1% penetration rate.

Perhaps, it was precisely because of this "lowest" 3.1% penetration rate that Laifen chose the floor scrubber battlefield for its "first battle" in crossing over into the intelligent cleaning market. Moreover, it can follow a major line of "floor scrubber - intelligent floor scrubber - floor scrubbing robot", being able to attack when advantageous and defend when necessary. However, even the floor scrubber category with a relatively low penetration rate has long become a red ocean.

Tineco Floor One S9 series intelligent floor scrubber (photographed at the IFA 2025 by Lei Technology)

Data from Aowei Cloud Network shows that in 2019, the domestic floor scrubber market size was less than 100 million yuan. While it skyrocketed to 14.1 billion yuan in five years, the number of product models also increased exponentially. In 2022, the number of floor scrubber models in the domestic market was 481, and in 2024, it exceeded the 1,000 mark, reaching 1,042.

Whether in terms of market size or product models, the domestic intelligent floor scrubber market and the entire intelligent cleaning market have been expanding significantly in recent years, and this strong growth trend continues this year. The latest data shows that in the first three quarters of 2025, the sales volume of the domestic cleaning appliance market was 30.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 29.4%.

The battle in the intelligent cleaning market is fierce, with new and old players engaging in a "free - for - all"

The rapid growth of the intelligent cleaning market size and the sharp increase in product quantity do not necessarily mean an increase in the number of industry enterprises.

Dreame Matrix10 Ultra floor mopping and sweeping robot (photographed by Lei Technology)

Taking the floor scrubber market as an example, data from both Aowei Cloud Network and GfK Zhongyikang show that the number of online floor scrubber brands decreased significantly in 2024. Although the number of floor scrubber brands decreased, the floor scrubber (especially the intelligent floor scrubber) market has still been growing at a high - speed in the past two years. This only indicates that this category is undergoing accelerated reshuffling, with the strong getting stronger. It is likely to follow the "old path" of the floor sweeping robot market.

IDC data shows that in the first half of 2025, the world's top five floor sweeping robot manufacturers were Roborock (20.7%), Ecovacs (13.9%), Dreame (12.3%), Xiaomi (10.1%), and iRobot (7.9%), collectively accounting for 64.8% of the market share, an increase of 4.8 percentage points compared to the same period in 2024, further highlighting the leading effect.

(Chart source: IDC)

In the floor scrubber market, currently, there is a two - way competition between Tineco (under Ecovacs) and Roborock. Dreame, which ranks third in the market share, is making great efforts to catch up, aiming to form a new "big three" pattern.

Whether in the floor sweeping robot or floor scrubber categories, apart from Xiaomi, the current leading manufacturers in the industry, namely Roborock, Ecovacs (including Tineco), and Dreame, all come from the cleaning appliance field.

Among them, Ecovacs was established in 1998, Roborock in 2014, and Dreame in 2017. During the transformation and upgrading of the cleaning appliance industry, the representative enterprises in the entire industry have a relatively high "new - technology content". In addition, Yunjing, established in 2016, has also grown into a non - negligible player in the floor sweeping robot and floor scrubber industries.

Yunjing S3 Max Island floor scrubber (photographed by Lei Technology)

Similarly, the brand - new intelligent cleaning track, which integrates "intelligence, technology, and robotization", has not only attracted players like Xiaomi (Mi Home) and JD.com (JD Zaozao, etc.), which are full - category ecological platform players, but also traditional home appliance giants and cross - border new forces, even though the market influence of the latter two groups is not very high at present.

Home appliance giant enterprises represented by Midea and Haier have long started to expand the "household appliances for daily life" category and included the intelligent cleaning category in it. Over the years, Haier has not only launched as many as 22 floor sweeping robot products but also 6 floor scrubber products.

The customized floor sweeping robot launched by Haier in 2016 (Image source: Haier)

In contrast, Midea entered the market relatively late and lost more than 200 million yuan in the floor sweeping robot market last year. However, Fang Hongbo, the chairman of Midea, made his stance clear again in May this year: "This business is global, and every country needs it. It is an emerging industry. So, even if we perform poorly and make losses, we will keep going. Because we have the ability and strength. We'll just accept the losses and see how it goes in the end."

Midea V16 intelligent floor mopping and sweeping robot (Image source: Midea)

The cross - border new forces, based on underlying common technologies, intend to turn the intelligent cleaning track into the " second growth curve" for their own development. At the same time, for these new technology hardware enterprises, the best entry point for their robot grand strategy in the household scenario is none other than the relatively segmented intelligent cleaning scenario.

For DJI, its underlying core technologies accumulated over the years, such as the flight control technology of drones, data transmission, AI algorithms, environmental perception, obstacle - avoidance systems, and intelligent path planning capabilities, can theoretically be "applied" to more product categories such as intelligent cleaning, and all have the opportunity to build unique competitiveness.

For Laifen, its self - developed core technologies, which it is "proud of" in beauty product categories such as hair dryers, electric toothbrushes, and razors, such as high - speed brushless motors, servo systems, and noise - reduction technologies, can also be extended to intelligent cleaning categories, such as floor scrubbers and vacuum cleaners.

(Image source: Laifen)

Therefore, although the current intelligent cleaning track is still dominated by new and old players in the vertical field of cleaning appliances, whether it is a platform player like Xiaomi (Mi Home) that has already made a name for itself, or home appliance giants like Midea and Haier that are still continuously deploying, or cross - border new forces like DJI and Laifen that have entered or are entering, all are further betting on this large emerging market, which has the dual "advantages" of future category development and market penetration space and the earliest implementation and explosion scenario for home robot applications.

Is intelligent cleaning just an appetizer for home robots?

In recent years, robot technology has developed by leaps and bounds. Paired with artificial intelligence technology, "humanoid robots" have started to move towards commercialization and popularization.

However, at present, "humanoid robots" still have a long way to go before they can enter every household. In terms of price, the current related products are priced anywhere from 100,000 to hundreds of thousands of yuan. In terms of technology, as Li Zhengxiang, the chairman of the Hubei Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, said, "The development of humanoid robots in China is very fast