On November 5, Southern Metropolis Daily disclosed a document: the Provincial Development and Reform Commission, the Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology, and the Provincial Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development jointly issued the "Guangdong Province Action Plan for Accelerating the Innovative Development of the Whole-House Smart Industry (2026–2028)."
Three departments jointly signed off, and this combination itself speaks volumes. The NDRC handles industrial planning, the MIIT handles manufacturing, and the MOHURD handles housing—the whole-home intelligence chain spans three industries that originally did not talk much to one another: manufacturing, real estate, and home decoration.
Three years, three steps — the numbers are laid out very clearly
By the end of 2026: cultivate more than 30 high-quality products, further advance the pilot programs in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and build a cumulative total of more than 60 whole-home smart projects across the province, covering more than 10,000 units (rooms) of various types of housing and public building spaces.
By the end of 2027: a cumulative total of more than 60 high-quality products; Guangzhou and Shenzhen will roll out citywide construction, and other cities in the Pearl River Delta will each select one county (city, district, or town) as a model, with cumulative coverage exceeding 20,000 units (rooms).
By the end of 2028: more than 100 high-quality products in total, the province's household electric appliance manufacturing industry's revenue will exceed 1.1 trillion yuan, fully rolled out across 21 prefecture-level cities, cumulatively covering more than 30,000 units (rooms), and leading or participating in the formulation and revision of more than 90 local and group standards for smart homes.
Looking at the three numbers together is interesting: products went from 30 to 100, coverage went from 10,000 to 30,000 units, and revenue reached 1.1 trillion. Product count grew more than threefold, covered units tripled, and revenue is to reach the trillion level—meaning the increment does not come from “selling a few more units,” but from raising the per-unit value of each home.
The order value of a whole-home smart solution is more than ten or even dozens of times that of a single home appliance. But what it sells is not a product, but a solution.
There are two signals hidden in the technology list
The technical directions proposed by the plan: spatial intelligence, on-device intelligence, multimodal perception, reliable communication, and human-computer interaction. These are capability-level arrangements.
What is truly noteworthy is the other two.
One is to promote the large-scale application of domestic chips in whole-home smart products and accelerate the implementation of open-source technologies such as OpenHarmony and RISC-V. The impact on the supply chain is direct: main control solutions will be switched one after another, the bill of materials will change accordingly, and the complexity of alternative materials, version management, and batch traceability will rise significantly. For hardware companies, BOM management will become a notch more difficult.
The other is supporting enterprises in developing multimodal large models and agent products for whole-home intelligence scenarios. This sentence pulls “intelligence” from the level of device functions to the system level—being able to connect every switch to the internet is not what makes it intelligent; it is the entire system being able to perceive, judge, and respond proactively.
A scenario checklist is more valuable than a technology checklist
The application scenarios in the plan are written in great detail; I’ll pick a few that are easily underestimated.
“Promote smart whole-home renovation systems and a one-stop consumption model, and drive the realization of renovation is smart.” This sentence breaks down the boundary between home renovation and home appliances. Previously, renovation companies sold construction services, and home appliance stores sold products; each side made its own profit. Now, to create a one-stop offering, who integrates whom, who supplies whom, and how the accounts are split are all new questions.
“Focus on scenarios such as home-based elderly care, child care, health monitoring, and low-carbon energy saving to advance inclusive whole-home smart renovations, and encourage qualified cities to explore incorporating age-friendly whole-home smart renovations into the scope of basic elderly care service provision”. Once age-friendly renovations are included in basic elderly care services, the purchasers change from individuals to institutions and governments, and the requirements for delivery documents, acceptance documents, and after-sales response are completely different.
“Encourage talent apartments and other supporting developments to be equipped with whole-home smart systems, and commercial housing to build high-level whole-home smart application scenarios, with the incremental construction cost included in the project investment estimate.” This is the most practical point—being able to include the cost in the investment estimate means developers do not have to absorb it themselves, and it can be reflected in housing prices. This loosens procurement constraints on the real estate side.
Non-residential sectors were also named: hospitals, schools, hotels, office buildings, commercial complexes, and industrial parks, corresponding to smart wards, smart teaching, smart guest rooms, and smart offices.
The business has changed, and so must the account set
I’ve seen too many cases like this in the home furnishings and home appliance industry: companies take on whole-home smart projects but still use the same process they use to sell air conditioners.
The problem lies in four places.
Quotation. A whole-house smart home quotation is generated through configuration——floor plan, area, style, budget, brand preference; multiply a few dimensions, and the SKU combinations become astronomical. Using Excel to create quotations, one person cannot produce three in a day, and it is easy to miss items. What is needed here is configuration-based quotation capability: after selecting the floor plan, automatically bring out the point list; after selecting the style, automatically replace the panel model; price and discount rules follow along.
Delivery. Whole-home smart systems are project-based, not order-based. For a single house, goods arrive in several batches—plumbing and electrical phase, concealed works, panel installation, and debugging and integrated commissioning—and in between, schedules must be aligned with the renovation team. Managing this with standard sales orders will lead to situations such as “goods have all been shipped but cannot be installed” or “halfway through installation, we find two panels are missing.” What must be done is to stock by project, ship by phase, and dispatch work by workstation.
Channels. There are especially many roles in this chain: real estate centralized procurement, turnkey renovation companies, regional distributors, installation service providers, and after-sales outlets. The prices, rebates, and payment terms at each level are all different, and there is also the issue of cross-regional channel diversion. If the pricing system for multi-level channels still relies on regional managers making arbitrary decisions, year-end reconciliation will inevitably lead to arguments.
After-sales. After-sales for whole-house smart homes is not about repairing machines; it is about safeguarding the system. Device online rate, response timeliness, spare parts turnover, and maintenance contract expiration reminders—all of these must be supported by a work order system, and it must know which house each device is installed in, when it was installed, and which batch. If serial number traceability cannot be achieved, on-site visits are blind repairs.
What does 1.1 trillion rely on?
Revenue cannot be pushed from the current base to 1.1 trillion yuan by relying on per-unit gross profit. The home appliance industry has fought price wars for thirty years; everyone knows hardware margins are as thin as paper.
The real opportunity lies at both ends: one end is solution premium—the same equipment is installed into a pre-designed scenario, and what is sold is the experience, not the parts; the other end is supply chain efficiency—multiple varieties, small batches, and fast delivery. Whoever has faster inventory turnover and a higher kitting rate can survive at the same price.
Both ends point to the same thing—an enterprise must be capable of treating the “project” as an accounting unit. Whether a project makes money must be calculable down to every house, every location, and every on-site visit. Using the account books for commodity sales to handle engineering orders will ultimately result in muddled accounts.
There is another sentence in the plan aimed at SMEs: guide SMEs to deepen their focus on core components and segmented scenarios, and cultivate a batch of specialized, refined, distinctive and innovative enterprises. This sounds like polite talk, but it is actually true. In the whole-house smart home complete-device track, what is competed on is brands and channels; it is very difficult for small and medium players to force their way in; but a sensor, a driver module, or an algorithm for a segmented scenario can instead be done deeply.
If you want to take action now, change one thing first
No need to rush into a big system. First, set up the "project" dimension.
Orders are recorded under projects, procurement is recorded under projects, inventory reservations are recorded under projects, work hours are recorded under projects, and revenue and costs are also aggregated by project. With just this one action, only after it is done will you know whether each project is truly profitable or only appears to be.
In three years, a 1.1 trillion market, 30,000 homes. The door is the same door, but the business is no longer the same business.
