Awe'S Direct Attack: The Rise Of New Consumption And The Spread Of "Lack Of Core" To Household Appliances

From March 22 to March 25, awe was held in Shanghai. Due to the impact of the epidemic, awe was below the return line after two years. As one of the three major consumer electronics exhibitions in the world, together with IFA of Germany and ces of the United States, awe in Shanghai is the wind vane of 3C industry.

Under the epidemic situation, new consumption trends have emerged. Kitchen appliances, health appliances, and lifestyle products have become popular options, which will rise sharply in 2020. Although the momentum continues, with the improvement of the domestic epidemic situation, the growth rate began to slow down this year. In addition, some manufacturers told the 21st century economic report that the shortage of chips has also affected the production and shipment of many home appliances, which could not be alleviated in the first half of the year. In particular, small and medium-sized manufacturers are facing supply chain challenges this year.

Home appliances and consumer electronics are important categories of consumption, and consumption is the sea god needle of national economy. In terms of policy, the Ministry of Commerce has pointed out that in 2021, it will adhere to the strategic basis point of expanding domestic demand, strive to break through the blocking points, make up the short board, comprehensively promote consumption, improve the modern circulation system, and effectively enhance the basic role of consumption in economic development.

The reporter of 21st century economic report observed on the exhibition stand that the product matrix of leading enterprises is becoming more and more comprehensive, and the direction of building core barriers is more and more clear. At the same time, intelligence is still the direction pursued by home appliance enterprises. "Multi scene", "distributed experience", "intelligent center" and "solution" have become the high-frequency words of manufacturers. The combination of hardware and software, the interconnection between enterprises are more in-depth than before, and the cross-border competition in the field of Internet of things is becoming increasingly fierce.

The shortage of chips has also affected the production and shipment of many home appliances, especially small and medium-sized manufacturers, which are facing the challenge of supply chain this year. Visual China

New trend of consumption structure: emerging home appliances and smart appliances are popular

It is mentioned in the "14th five year plan" and the outline of the long-term goal in 2035: "conform to the trend of residents' consumption upgrading, combine the expansion of consumption with the improvement of people's quality of life, promote the development of consumption towards green, healthy and safe, and steadily improve the level of residents' consumption." Cultivating new consumption, developing information consumption, digital consumption and green consumption, and encouraging the development of new modes of business such as customization, experience, intelligence and fashion consumption have been raised to a strategic height.

Since last year, there has been a new structural trend in the consumer market of household appliances, and the hot spot of residents' demand has also shifted from traditional consumption to emerging household appliances and intelligent whole house products.

According to the report on China's home appliance market in 2020 (hereinafter referred to as the report) recently released by the China Institute of electronic information industry development, the retail sales of China's home appliance market will drop by 6.5% to 833.3 billion yuan in 2020. Under the impact of the epidemic, it still showed strong resilience, especially in the fourth quarter, the retail sales reached the annual highest of 294.1 billion yuan.

It is worth noting that the report shows that the high-end products and household appliances in China's home appliance market will increase significantly in 2020. According to the data, in 2020, the retail sales and retail sales of TVs above 10000 yuan in Jingdong will both increase by more than 70% year-on-year; the retail sales and retail sales of refrigerators above RMB 20000 will soar by 126% and 132% respectively; and the online retail sales will increase by 1885% with the same ratio of wireless handheld vacuum cleaners and electric mops. According to the report, "new consumption" and "high-end" will be the main innovation direction of household appliances in 2021.

Judging from the layout of TCL, Hisense, Haier, Gree, Glanz and kovos, the trend is still continuing. On the awe stand, a white TV brand told reporters that the sales of coffee machines, water dispensers and other lifestyle products grew most rapidly; another kitchen online red brand told reporters that although the growth in the first quarter became stable, it still expected to achieve 100% growth throughout the year; and a foreign brand sales staff told the reporter that the sales volume of its online Red cooking machine alone reached 260000 last year According to a traditional kitchen appliance company, the air frying pan grew explosively last year, and the accumulated revenue of new products reached hundreds of millions of yuan.

On the one hand, the epidemic situation has catalyzed the demand of families to improve the quality of life, oven and other consumable kitchenware are constantly developing in terms of quality, and the high-end market has also been growing; on the other hand, with the atomization trend of Chinese families, small families' demand for small household appliances is also personalized, and lightweight, inclusive, fashionable cooking supplies and smart home products are deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

The Ministry of Commerce has previously said that commodity consumption will continue to rise in 2020 and the consumption structure will continue to be optimized. The sales of green, intelligent and health products are booming, and Guochao brand is sought after. In terms of accelerating the cultivation of new consumption, traditional commercial enterprises will be supported to use 5g, big data, Internet of things and other information technologies to accelerate digital, intelligent transformation and cross-border integration, so as to better meet the personalized and customized consumption demand.

New challenges in upstream: core shortage and core filling strategy

At the same time, consumer electronics enterprises are facing the supply chain problem of chip shortage. In addition to the automobile, mobile phone factory, panel factory, the core problem also spread to the terminal home appliances.

A small household appliance manufacturer who participated in the exhibition told the 21st century economic report: "there are many factors leading to the gap of home appliance chips. First, the profit of home appliance chips is low. When the overall import of chips is reduced, they will give priority to digital products such as mobile phones, leaving less for home appliances. Secondly, if household appliances chips are to find new suppliers, it will also take three or four months to switch The gap will continue; in addition, the overall capacity of global wafer plants is insufficient, and it is difficult for home appliances to obtain priority production capacity supply, and our inventory is not enough. "

To make matters worse, the shortage of chips and the rise in prices of other upstream raw materials have also caused a big blow to small and medium-sized enterprises. "At present, many small and medium-sized enterprises are afraid to quote, because there are only spot goods. For example, the price of paper products in bulk commodities is one price a day, and the price of metals is also on the wait and see. Many small manufacturers do not have futures inventory, can not control the cost at all, and can only increase the price of terminal products. At present, there are 8 to 10 points of price growth. " The aforementioned manufacturers analyzed to the reporter.

In order to help small and medium-sized businesses solve their difficulties, some large manufacturers have tried to group innovation, establish intelligent manufacturing industrial park, cooperate with the local government to coordinate the supply chain demand of small and medium-sized businesses, purchase raw materials together, manage quality control, and establish a more safe and sustainable manufacturing ecological chain.

In the absence of core, many enterprises are accelerating the layout of semiconductor business. For example, TCL has recently decided to set up a semiconductor business unit to look for opportunities from three aspects: semiconductor power devices, integrated circuit design, and integrated circuit industry investment.

At awe exhibition stand, many enterprises also display chip and module capabilities. For example, Galanz showed two aiot chips released in 2019 -- BF Xijiao and Nb Shishan. Both chips adopt risc-v architecture and will be used in Galanz's household appliances. At present, BF Xijiao has been used in mass production. Chip designer Yuefang technology was jointly established by Galanz, Hengji group and saifang technology.

With chip design and other related capabilities, it can enhance the competitiveness of enterprises, and core technology is also the strategic direction of transformation and upgrading of household appliances enterprises. At the same time, in the new situation of new chip architecture, customized chips can save cost and improve performance for home appliance enterprises. In the era of Internet of things, the demand for chips in smart appliances is also growing rapidly.

Home appliance enterprises have explored the field of chips before. For example, Haier focuses on MCU chips, and also cooperates with chip manufacturers to push IOT chips; Hisense has established Xinxin microelectronics, and chip products have been supplied to panel enterprises; Skyworth has launched AI chips and invested in memory chip design company; Gree Electric has set up a microelectronics department and invested in Wentai technology and San'an optoelectronics.

In the new round of chip demand growth and insufficient production capacity, household appliance enterprises are also facing opportunities and challenges. At present, the national strategic level encourages enterprises to innovate, invest in R & D, and conquer the core highlands of semiconductors. This is also an opportunity for home appliance manufacturers to make further breakthroughs in the field of intelligent manufacturing and develop into technology enterprises.

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