To become a necessity choice for more people, sweepers are not just "roll technology"

What we really want is something that can work, but in the end, we end up using technology—— Douglas Adams 

Not long ago, several major players, including Kovos, Chase, Cloud Whale, Stone, and others, have successively innovated their products from the perspective of claiming revolutionary or disruptive technology. If we compare the technologies of each company, we will find that they seem to have their own strengths, but they seem to achieve the same goal in terms of intelligent recognition, obstacle avoidance, cleaning power, and other technical dimensions.

The technology competition in the sweeping robot industry has become a sentiment. Although everyone is emphasizing not to roll the parameter roll technology, from the scene of the brand's new product launch, it can be seen that rolling the parameter roll technology is an inertia link. Behind the volume, it is actually the industry's concern about how to break the growth ceiling. The more worried it is, the more it relies on solving problems through technology. This is the contradiction and passivity that the sweeping robot industry is currently showing.

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In fact, the current penetration rate of this category is only around 7%, and a good product cannot become a compelling choice for more people. According to the "2023-2028 Market Development Monitoring and Investment Prospects Report of China's Sweeping Robot Industry" by Huajing Industry Research Institute, structurally speaking, the penetration rate of sweeping robots in China's top tier cities has reached as high as 20%, but there is still insufficient awareness of the category in low tier cities. In the long run, there is still room for growth in the sweeping robot market, and sinking the market will become a key factor in the industry's development.

According to data from Ovi Cloud, the period from 2018 to 2020 was a period of rapid development for sweeping robots, with annual sales exceeding 6 million units; In 2021, the sales of sweeping robots began to decline, dropping to 5.78 million units. In 2022, the sales were 4.41 million units, a year-on-year decrease of about 23.8%. In the first half of 2023, the sales of sweeping robots reached 1.45 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 5.39%.

In 5 years, there may be another turning point

How can the market for sweeping robots become even more popular? Must it be technology? Some senior executives have also put forward their own opinions.

Ji Zhirong, Vice President of the Research and Development System of Kovos Robotics, shared some viewpoints with reporters from China Home Appliance Network. In his opinion, compared to the highly popular popular popular popular electric appliances, robots have a technical difficulty that is not in the same dimension. Users have a process of contacting, understanding, and recognizing sweeping robots, and they also need to bridge some gaps. The penetration rate of the sweeping robot market has not yet reached a tipping point, and the core of leapfrogging is still the return to technology. Technology can continue to break through around user pain points, making it more comfortable, simple, and reliable to use. Through technological improvements, the industry chain can be integrated to the extreme, and sooner or later, the tipping point of penetration rate will be achieved, and this category will gradually return to the truly essential category.

When discussing the turning point issue of the sweeping robot industry, CEO Zhang Junbin of Yunjing analyzed to China Home Appliance Network that, firstly, the product experience can satisfy the vast majority of users; 2、 The cost has decreased in scale, making it accessible to ordinary consumers; Thirdly, the product quality should meet the same lifespan requirements as white goods. When these three dimensions are met simultaneously, the growth rate will rise again.

The growth path of China's sweeping machine industry is very similar to that of the air conditioning industry, and to achieve a relatively high penetration rate, it requires a period of market concentration education. In the future, to break through the market penetration rate of sweeping machines and continue to increase the entire industry, we need to improve the user experience, and the threshold for user purchase continues to decrease. This is a more complex system engineering than the air conditioning industry. At that time, sweeping opportunities will usher in a new era The turning point of exponential growth

Zhang Junbin also determined the timeline and believes that this category will reach a large-scale exponential growth inflection point after meeting all three dimensions in about 5 years.

What really works is not just 'roll technology'

As a "high intelligence" product, most sweeping machine companies have previously targeted their target users at 90, 00, or even more young people or even lazy people in the future. It is widely believed that young people are easy to accept products with high intelligence, high technological content, and personalization. However, it cannot be ignored that in the past two years, some user research and analysis have shown that the user audience profile of brooms is mainly concentrated in the middle-aged population, with the age range of 41 to 50 being the focus of the user audience profile. On the contrary, among the young population, the demand and usage rate of brooms are relatively low.

Another fact is that currently, sweeping robot products are focused on solving the problem of floor cleaning in large scenes, and the vast majority of Chinese households are small, even in first tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. The "China Census Yearbook 2020" released by the National Bureau of Statistics shows that the per capita living area of urban households in China is 36.52 square meters. Looking at the whole country, the per capita housing construction area in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong are 34.89, 32.28, and 33.84 square meters, respectively, which have not reached the national average level.

In first tier cities with high purchasing power, taking Beijing as an example, many household users do not have a large housing area. Some families with children and pets are potential target users of brooms. Currently, whether it is the base station or the body itself, the size of the broom product is not small, and its land occupation is not high enough for such household users. How to achieve lightweight and miniaturization, allowing products to enter small scenarios, is a direction that enterprises need to consider.

In addition, the trend of home integration is highlighted, and embedded home appliances are becoming the choice of high-end groups. If embedded solutions are also taken into account in floor sweeper products, they will undoubtedly better meet the needs of some high-end users.

In the current era of valuing health and pursuing a healthy and high-quality life, in addition to solving visible dirt in the home, how to solve "invisible" ground dirt and make it visible to users should also be a dimension that sweeping machine enterprises attach importance to.

Overall, as a good product to improve the quality of life, the prospects of the broom are still generally optimistic at the enterprise level, and they are also sparing no effort to iterate and upgrade from the technical perspective in order to break the growth bottleneck. In the process of ushering in the next tipping point, they may also need to pay attention to more dimensions to make the broom truly "effective" among users.