China's smart home camera market will grow by 7.5% in 2023

According to IDC's Quarterly Tracking Report on China's Smart Home Device Market, Q4 2022, the shipment volume of China's smart home camera market exceeded 20 million units in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 1.6% (only indoor cameras that support wireless networking are counted, excluding operators and industry markets). In the past year, the Chinese smart home camera market has significantly upgraded in terms of functional configuration, resolution, and night vision capabilities. However, due to the overall consumer environment, the product upgrade has limited boosting effect on market demand, and the growth rate of market shipments has slowed down.

IDC predicts that the shipment volume of China's smart home camera market is expected to be 21.55 million units in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 7.5%. As the pace of work and life returns to normal, the demand for intelligent home safety monitoring will gradually expand. Along with the upgrading of traditional security needs, the demand for universal security scenarios such as elderly and young care and pet companionship will continue to grow, further promoting the upgrading and development of the smart home camera market. In this regard, the development of China's smart home camera market in 2023 should focus on the following three key directions:

Functional upgrade penetrates into offline channel

In 2022, the smart home camera market has achieved significant improvements in resolution and night vision capabilities, but upgrades are mainly concentrated in the online market, and there is still broad development space for offline channels. The shipment proportion of smart home cameras that support 2K resolution and low light full color night vision in the online market has rapidly increased in the past year, replacing 1080P and infrared night vision as the mainstream configuration in the market. Security manufacturers have been active in this round of upgrades, accelerating mainstream product iteration while actively expanding the 4K high-definition market layout. This year, with the acceleration of offline channel upgrades by security manufacturers and the expansion of offline layout by technology manufacturers, the development potential of the offline market for smart home cameras will accelerate to be unleashed.

AI capability expansion for pan security needs

AI capability will become one of the important directions for the upgrading and development of the smart home camera market, meeting the increasingly diverse needs of users in pan security scenarios. After resuming work and classes, the needs for elderly and young care, pet companionship, and courier care have gradually become prominent. Upgrading basic functions such as clarity has become difficult to fully meet the relevant needs, and upgrading AI capabilities has become increasingly important. Therefore, smart home cameras will accelerate hardware configuration and video algorithm upgrades, optimize the application of existing AI capabilities such as mobile recognition and facial recognition in home security care. At the same time, accelerate the development and application of new skills such as fireworks recognition, package recognition, and fall recognition, and expand the application scenarios and scope of smart home cameras.

IDC China Senior Analyst Liu Yun believes that the expansion of the smart home camera market towards pan security scenarios not only requires upgrading of functional configurations, but also the expansion of ecological connectivity. When laying out market development, manufacturers need to achieve a combination of software and hardware, strengthen AI upgrades, and develop intelligent applications based on situational needs, and optimize the ecological connection between devices to fully leverage the visual capabilities of smart home cameras and expand market development space.

Integrating ecological linkage into a larger market

According to IDC data, nearly 70% of the smart home camera market shipments in 2022 support connecting to home interconnection platforms and linking with other smart home devices. This proportion has not changed significantly compared to the past three years, and device linkage is still in the most basic functions of switching, viewing, and so on. From this, it can be seen that the development of China's smart home camera market is still mainly focused on single product capabilities, and the value of ecological linkage has not yet been effectively developed. However, smart home cameras are not only the main components of home safety monitoring scenarios, but also an important carrier of visual interaction in the home environment. Their accumulation of visual ability is of great significance for the interaction upgrade of smart homes and even the consumer electronics market. Therefore, smart home camera manufacturers should actively expand platform connectivity, enrich device linkage, deepen collaborative capabilities, and expand broader development space.

IDC China Senior Analyst Liu Yun believes that the expansion of the smart home camera market towards pan security scenarios not only requires upgrading of functional configurations, but also the expansion of ecological connectivity. When laying out market development, manufacturers need to achieve a combination of software and hardware, strengthen AI upgrades, and develop intelligent applications based on situational needs, and optimize the ecological connection between devices to fully leverage the visual capabilities of smart home cameras and expand market development space.