Source: AWE
On March 17th, Appliance & electronics World Expo 2019 (AWE 2019 for short) was concluded at Shanghai New International Expo Center. As a global scientific feast with the theme of “Falling in love with AI·Smart Life”, this four-day expo completely displayed the innovative achievements which deeply integrated global home appliances and consumer electronics with advanced technologies such as AI, Internet of Thing, big data, and cloud computing.
In 2019, AWE once again created a number of records, including unprecedented exhibition scale, dazzling exhibitor squad, the most cutting-edge scientific products and solutions, flocks of visitors, and overwhelming media coverage. This global platform with Chinese characteristics not only vividly demonstrates intelligent life scenes, but also profoundly impacts and changes people’s life style and even the industrial ecology of home appliances and consumer electronics. Based in China and facing to the world, today’s AWE has become a top comprehensive professional exhibition platform of home appliances and consumer electronics all over the world.
Hitting a Number of New Records, AWE’s Influence Scales New Heights
Relying on Chinese home appliances and consumer electronics industry, the largest industry both in scale and in trade volume all over the world, AWE has steadily improved its own stance and influence worldwide and gradually risen up to be one of the three top home appliances and consumer electronics fairs in the world. In recent years, it steps into a new higher stage each year and thus has realized a leap-frog development. 2019 sees the birth of a number of AWE’s new records.
In 2019, AWE covered ten exhibition halls of Shanghai New International Expo Center with an exhibition area of 130,000 square meters. It attracted nearly 900 global leading home appliances and consumer electronics manufacturers, IT and internet enterprises, core part suppliers, and IoT and AI startups to participate in. Its exhibition scale and exhibitor numbers refreshed the previous records once again.
Compared with previous years, AWE 2019 displayed much more products, ranging from consumer electronics, white goods, kitchen appliances, home appliances, environmental-protection and healthcare appliances, beauty care (personal-care) electric appliances, wearable devices and VR/AR to solutions such as smart home, intelligent retail, intelligent manufacturing, intelligent supply chain, intelligent transportation, intelligent medical treatment, and smart city. All these expanded the connotation and denotation of AWE in all aspects.
In 2019, first-tier Chinese and overseas brands of home appliances and consumer electronics appeared collectively. Tech giants including JD, Huawei, Qihoo 360, and Iflytek flocked to the Expo; a large number of global famous brands such as Rinnai and Nobilia became new members of AWE; and AMK (German Association of Modern Kitchen Industry) organized tens of its member enterprises to become the strongest German kitchen brand exhibition group in the history and showcased modern kitchen solutions such as integrated kitchen through a German modern kitchen exhibition area of nearly 2,000 square meters 2019 witnessed the initial gathering of global color TV brands “3S” (Sony, Samsung, and Sharp) at AWE. What’s more, the most luxury group of global color TVs appeared at AWE. Almost all the top ten global color TV brands participated in the Expo. AWE also accelerated to extend its exhibition scope to the upstream and downstream of home appliances and consumer electronics industry so as to build itself to be a super ecology that integrates resources ranging from the upstream and downstream the industry to cross-border industries. The participation of display giant, LG Display, was the example to illustrate this development trend of AWE.
According to AWE organizer, this year, it received nearly 340,000 visitors from home and abroad in total, hitting a new record once again. The number of corporate executives, industry insiders, consumers, and overseas visitors surpassed that of the previous years respectively. Among them, corporate executives accounted for nearly thirty percent, and the proportion of overseas visitors increased to 6%, while the amount of both professional visitors and consumers achieved a blowout growth. In 2019, the number and quality of AWE visitors realized important breakthroughs.
During AWE 2019, more than a hundred of media performed long-period, multi-dimensional, and high-frequency reports. It is worth mentioning that, CCTV sent a number of reporting teams to show AWE from multiple aspects for three weeks at its core programs such as XINWEN LIANBO (News Broadcast), First Time, CHNA BUSINESS NEWS, Live News, and Midnight News. On March 16th, XINWEN LIANBO broadcast AWE feature programme for more than 2 minutes, mainly involving the new technologies, new trends and new achievements of home appliances and consumer electronics such as 8K, 5G, IoT, intelligent connectivity, and product design; on March 18th, CCTV Finance’s Consumer Advocates showed the intelligent life experience and way of smart life brought by the integration of advanced technologies with home appliances and consumer electronics; CCTV Finance’s Dialogue moved its program taping to the site of AWE, and broadcast a AWE feature program for nearly 52 minutes on March 24th; and from March 23rd to 24th, CCTV Finance’s Financial Deep Discovery broadcast a feature program, Black Technology of Home Appliances Manufacturing, 3 times in 2 consecutive days for nearly 53 minutes in total, which was programmed based on in-depth interviews of AWE 2019.
Plus, AWE 2019 attracted global well-known media including Reuters, EFE, Nikkei, and New York Times as well to explore the innovative achievements that Chinese home appliances and consumer electronics industry obtained in the field of smart home, AI, and IoT. Tokyo Television Station’s WBS, one of Japan's most famous economic programs, sent reporting team in particular to AWE to deeply observe the development trend and the newest tendency of Chinese home appliances and consumer electronics industry.
Media comments to AWE properly reveals the platform value, mission, and global influence of AWE, such as “the most influential global home appliance industry vane”, “a new beginning for another golden decade of Chinese home appliances and consumer electronics industry”, “one who has returned from Wu Yue (five high mountains) thinks nothing of other mountains, and he who has been to AWE, thinks nothing of other corresponding fairs”, “AWE is fully capable and has the responsibility to continue to lead Chinese home appliances and consumer electronics industry to constantly improve the international vision and level, and it provides a wider platform for Chinese home appliances and consumer electronics industry to go global”.
IoT Accelerating Commercialization, An Era of Scene-based Intelligence Being Under Way
More than just the largest manufacturing base and consumer market of home appliances and consumer electronics all over the world, China is the main battlefield of the current round of scientific and technological innovation. Chinese enterprises of home appliances and consumer electronics are playing a leading role in innovation in the fields of intelligent home appliances, smart home, and digital family. As a global leading demonstration platform of home appliances and consumer electronics innovation, AWE not only displays leading technology in terms of global home appliances and consumer electronics, but more leads industrial revolution by showcasing technological development trend and consumer lifestyle, which is the largest charm of AWE.
Along with the in-depth integration of advanced technologies such as AI, IoT, and big data with consumer electronics industry, home appliances and consumer electronics is now saying goodbye to the era of single machine intelligence and entering into the new stage of scene-based intelligence. During AWE 2019, exhibitors fully illustrate the theme of AWE of this year, “Falling in love with AI·Smart Life”, with solutions of scene-based intelligent life.
It was said by Jiang Feng, the organizer of AWE and President of China Household Electrical Appliances Association, that AWE displayed a desirable future intelligent life scenes beyond our imagination as well as the latest achievements deeply integrating advanced technologies including AI, mobile internet, IoT, cloud computing, and big data with home appliances and consumer electronics. These latest achievements also involved much more diversified elements.
In Haier Exhibition Hall, Haier showcased the latest achievements of seven ecological circles including security & protection, cleaning & care, and air. In the circle of cleaning & care, Haier’s internet of clothes built a life-cycle-oriented management platform of clothes so as to provide a whole-life-cycle intelligent solution for washing, care, storing, matching, and shopping; and the Xinchu refrigerator (Linkcook) of Haier’s internet of food, playing as a role of “health adviser”, integrated more than 200 sources of seven major categories including delicious food, entertainment, farm, and nutritionist, and thus it can meet the customers’ one-stop requirements of shopping, storing, cooking, cleaning, and health management. Midea promoted a new internet brand, “BUGU”, to set up product assortment covering three life scenarios of kitchen, living, and bathroom with two professional scenarios of air and water, covering all aspects of people’s life. Hisense connected intelligent voice interaction system with home appliances products and integrated AI technology with sensor technology to allow customer control home appliances such as air conditioner, refrigerator, washing machine, and TV as well as intelligent home products such as curtain, door lock, and kitchen appliances via voice. TCL’s full AI scene and 4T scenario product matrix centered at AI × IoT covered a large number of varieties including color TV, air conditioner, refrigerator, washing machine, security & protection, healthcare, and digital product, which further richened the intelligent hardware ecology of daily life. Changhong realized the inter-connectivity, inter-controlling, and content interaction among different intelligent products through the in-depth integration of AI and IoT. By combining single home appliances with living space, Panasonic set up an econology circle to deliver the idea of intelligent home under one roof, involving building, decoration, home appliances, and home service.
The AWE Award, which has been reputed as the “Oscar” in the field of Chinese home appliances and consumer electronics industry, has always been regarded as the indicator of home appliances and consumer electronics development. This year, many of the AWE Award products are the latest achievements that deeply integrate cutting-edge technologies including AI, mobile internet, IoT, cloud computing, and big data with home appliances and consumer electronics industry. All these innovative products reflected the development trend of home appliances and consumer electronics technology, but also brought new and better intelligent life experience and lifestyle through intelligent applications such as AI, big data, and biological recognition.
As a matter of fact, China has taken the forefront in the world in terms of home appliances intelligent innovation. Now, China has initially realized cross-brand inter-connectivity. At the site of AWE, the intelligent home appliances cloud inter-connectivity project group of China Household Electrical Appliances Association simulated the main scenes of household life to set up three scenarios, namely intelligent living room, intelligent kitchen, and intelligent bedroom, to make visitors personally experience the interconnected intelligent life of cross-border brands and products. Not only that, China’s standard construction based on intelligent home appliances has also taken a leading position all over the world. During the period of AWE 2019, Intelligent Home Inter-Connectivity Working Group officially released the association standard T/CHEAA 0001.2-2019, The Second Part of Intelligent Home Appliances Cloud Inter-Connectivity: Requirements of Information Security Capability. This standard helps inter-connected enterprises reach consistent agreement on information security so as to guarantee the common benefit, prevent safety risk due to sharing, and safeguard the development of intelligent home appliances cross-brand connectivity. It is also the first standard in the world targeted at the information security of intelligent home appliances cloud inter-connectivity.
8K and 5G were the top two issues of AWE this year as well. 8K provides a new growth driver for consumer electronics and related industries, and advances customers’ audio-visual entertainment experience to an unprecedented new height. At AWE 2019, 8K presents the situation of collective outbreak. All color TV enterprises highlighted the demonstration of their 8K televisions. Sharp even demonstrated its whole 8K industrial chain at the site.
As to the most popular 5G in 2019, tech giants, such as Samsung and Huawei, displayed products and technical solutions based on 5G. Visitors can see the way that this communication technology changes people’s daily life as well as the new development opportunities brought by home appliances and consumer electronics industry.
The AWE Technology Park, which has been held for three years in a row, showcased the latest innovative achievements in terms of AI, intelligent entertainment, intelligent travelling, robot and automation, which demonstrated a desirable good life scene and can be considered as an epitome of Chinese science and technology innovation and startup.
Although AWE 2019 is concluded, the experience of intelligent life is just getting started. The wave of intelligent scientific innovation brought by AWE in the field of home appliances and consumer electronics shows only the tip of an iceberg.
Zhang Chonghe, President of China Light Industry Council, pointed out that home appliances industry had made remarkable contributions to people’s good life, and AWE showcased the innovative achievements of global home appliances, the new driving force for Chinese home appliances industry to become stronger, and the latest outcomes of current home appliances industry. It gathers the latest ideas of industrial development, and accumulates fresh strength of “reconstruction” to jointly enhance the restructuring of technology, production capacity, value, brand, and service of home appliances industry and build the future of Chinese home appliances industry with intelligence and wisdom.
More than just everlasting transformation and innovation as well as deep changes in the connotation and denotation of Chinese home appliances industry through AWE, Qin Shuo, an observer of culture and finance, sees the flexibility of Chinese economy. In his point of view, today’s Chinese home appliances industry is playing the role of leader and bellwether of beautiful life, high-quality development, and innovation orientation. And the development course of AWE is the story of traditional industry which is advancing with the times.
For AWE, 2019 marks a new beginning. Based on 2019, AWE will enter into a new development stage. It is reported that, in 2020, the scale of AWE will be further expanded to 13 exhibition halls in accordance with the initial planning of organizer. At the same time, the variety of exhibits will be richened while latest innovation results in terms of quality life and intelligent life of global home appliance and consumer electronics will be fully displayed at AWE in 2020. At that time, AWE will definitely demonstrate more wonderful products and technologies.
Jiang Feng underscored in her speech at the opening ceremony of AWE 2019 that, AWE would like to join hands with partners from all over the world to promote the new growth driver of home appliances industry and create a happier and brighter future.