首页即时动态 A.O.史密斯AI战略：长期主义视角下的技术与服务

A.O.史密斯AI战略：长期主义视角下的技术与服务

来源：家居百科时间：2026年01月12日 14:55

AI and the Future of Home Appliances: The Role of Systematized Patience The Emerging Wave of AI in the Home Appliance Industry in 2025

By 2025, the AI wave is sweeping across the home appliance industry, pointing a new direction. However, beneath the hype, a cool observation reveals: many products merely slap on the "AI" label, achieving only low-dimensional intelligence, while ignoring the complexity of the family environment — brand standards are inconsistent, devices operate independently, installation is cumbersome, and family members have diverse needs. Deep linking specific industries with general AI is a crucial step in the重构 (reconstruction) of AI.

The blind pursuit of stacking AI features often has the opposite effect. Major home appliance companies may need not just "faster" iteration but a bit of "systematic patience" to truly embrace AI.

What is meant by "systematic patience" is that during the process of AI landing, a global perspective and the determination of long-termism are required. It demands that enterprises not only focus on "the code behind the screen" but also on "the reality outside the screen"; not only solve "point intelligence" but also solve "full-chain collaboration" as well.

Technological Patience: From "General Conversation" to "Vertical Deepening"

The family is an extremely complex physical space, with the needs of the elderly, children, and office workers being entirely different, with northern water quality and southern humidity varying greatly.

"Systematic patience" is first evident in the perseverance in vertical scenarios. It requires enterprises to sink their hearts into solving those "Chinese-style problems" that general AI cannot answer.

华为, demonstrating technical patience, relies on HarmonyOS and adheres to the "seamless interconnection" technical path. It does not rush to stack hardware but focuses on deepening distributed technology to achieve interconnection at the bottom of various devices, allowing services to flow naturally between home appliance equipment.

With its AIoT ecosystem, Xiaomi uses technical patience to explore "end-side large models" and customized user experiences. Its recently released Miloco smart home future exploration plan uses an independently developed large model as the smart hub, with cameras as the source of visual information, and supports multi-IoT device access with the MCP protocol, achieving automatic capture of smart needs and rules in family life.

A.O. Smith, as a sample of traditional home appliance companies transforming, launched the AI-LiNK full-link and full-control intelligent system as early as 2020, when the industry was still rolling out single products. The home appliance industry itself has a deeper understanding of "the family system" — based on users' true needs for home appliances, it breaks the "island" state of appliances through interconnection at the bottom, allowing devices to collaborate like humans, thereby achieving active adjustment of the whole-house environment.

At the same time, for high water hardness areas in the north, it rides the difficult-to-tame stainless steel and develops the "Little Steel" heat exchange system to ensure energy efficiency remains stable for many years; for the space constraints of old houses, it launches phase change electric water heaters, which can output 200 liters of hot water with a small 60-liter volume; and for Chinese families living together across generations, it launches digital true five constant temperature systems with precise room temperature control, smart "Shen" kitchens, and other products with intelligent voice control. These innovations all originate from insights into the details of localized family life.

Service Patience: Filling the Gap in the "Last Mile"

The biggest paradox of smart homes is that the more intelligent the product, the higher the requirements for installation, construction, and after-sales service. If only "manufacturing parameters" are optimized but "delivery after entering the household" is ignored, then even the most advanced AI is just an empty building.

The second meaning of "systematic patience" is to integrate "service" into the technical system and do the difficult but right thing.

Through "Xiaomi Home", Xiaomi builds an offline service network, bringing high-cost-performance smart products and普惠 (inclusive) services down to county and town markets, promoting the equality of technology and service in the intelligent age.

A.O. Smith does not stop at selling products but extends its reach to the service end. By leading the establishment of industry colleges and initiating the "Golden Coach Program," the company transforms the previously lacking unified standard installation and construction teams into professional "delivery troops" with high-quality services. This precise control over the "last mile" is exactly the interpretation of "systematic" — patience in solving every detail of landing, so that AI can truly integrate into life.

Ecological Patience: From "Island of Appliances" to "Open and Shared Ecosystem"

In the ultimate vision of smart homes, no single company can dominate the market. In the home, there are air conditioners, bathrooms, kitchen stoves, lighting, water purification, and security, with many brands and various protocols. If each brand guards its own walls, then the user will only get a pile of "hard-to-use" items that cannot communicate.

The third meaning of "systematic patience" is to break barriers and build an ecosystem.

The true long-termists do not build islands but connectors. Since 2021, A.O. Smith has actively expanded the ecological boundary, on the one hand, deepening connections with technology companies such as Huawei, Flir, and Morgan Smart, promoting interoperation of the AI-LiNK system across multi-brand devices; on the other hand, it has jointly established an industry "alliance" with leading home brands such as Gold Medal, Kohler, and TATA to create cross-category comfortable home solutions.

Schneider Electric has broken the "data island" between brands by promoting open international standards such as KNX. It aggregates a variety of products such as switch panels, circuit breakers, streetlights, charging piles, and photovoltaic panels, achieving intelligent deployment and management of electricity from single-family homes to large communities. This open collaborative architecture not only interoperates with power distribution, lighting, and security systems but also considers efficient control on both local and cloud levels, laying a solid energy foundation for smart living.

Both Huawei and Xiaomi are also making frequent moves in open ecosystems. Huawei is committed to unifying the industry "language" through HarmonyOS Connect ecosystem standards, allowing different brands' hardware to seamlessly connect to the same system platform, solving the pain points of "devices cannot connect or communicate." Xiaomi connects industry chain partners through internet thinking and supply chain management, building an AIoT ecosystem.

This joint win-win action is not a marketing calculation but a profound understanding of industry rules: the future of smart homes belongs to those willing to sink their hearts into establishing standards, flourishing ecosystems, and creating value with big cakes.

Conclusion: Long-termists Crossing the Cycle, Friends with Time

Looking back, Tesla has been laying out autonomous driving chips and building a "vehicle-data-algorithm-OTA" closed loop flywheel as early as ten years ago, Siemens proposed "Industry 4.0" when most companies were still discussing whether to move to the cloud in 2014. A.O. Smith also made forward-looking layouts in the AI and smart home track years ago. These giants that cross the technical cycle are all believers in "long-termism."

For the home appliance industry, AI is not a short sprint but a marathon about "systemic capabilities." So-called "systematic patience" is essentially a return to the original intention of enterprises: centered on users' real needs, solving pain points with technical breakthroughs, ensuring experience with services, and creating value with ecosystems.

When the noisy waves recede, only enterprises with "systematic patience" have the ability to launch truly recognized solutions by users and redefine the intelligent lifestyle of Chinese families over the next ten years.