Small household appliances industry reaches 100 billion market segments

Small home appliance industry enterprises have begun to enter into hundreds of billions of market segments. “In the current global microwave oven market with annual sales of more than 80 million units, the domestic market has been unable to sell more than 15 million units a year, and the market scale has fluctuated around 10 billion yuan. As of now, microwave ovens have gone through 20 years of history in China,” Zhu Fengtao, general manager of Midea’s kitchen appliances division, said in an interview with Southern Metropolis Daily that Midea’s current domestic “10 billion” scale microwave oven industry will be reopened. It is defined as the “pan-microwave industry” including industrial microwave ovens, commercial microwave ovens, and other industries. In the next five years, the overall value of the “pan-microwave industry” will be promoted to “100 billion”. This will also be the first "billion-dollar" industry in the domestic small household appliance industry.

Microwave oven industry platform sprint "100 billion"

Microwave ovens that have been hailed by the Western community as "kitchen revolutions" have had their functional applications greatly reduced after entering the Chinese kitchen. Zhu Fengtao told Nandu reporters that “microwave ovens, as a kind of products in the kitchen that can provide convenient and rapid heat sources, are seriously underestimated in their potential functional value and must be activated through technological innovation and consumer cultivation to activate new industrial values.”

According to the latest plan of the United States, the company is trying to upgrade the microwave oven industry platform. Upgrade the microwave oven from the kitchen supporting role to the protagonist, and coordinate the full value chain space of the microwave oven industry, including ingredients, food, appliances, services, etc., based on the microwave manufacturing chain, synergistically with the upstream and downstream food chain, processing chain, and service chain. It will be a continuous upgrade from a market of 10 billion yuan to a market of 100 billion yuan, and even a trillion market,” Zhu Fengtao said.

According to statistics, the US produces and sells microwave foods that exceed US$20 billion annually, and the per capita consumption exceeds US$60. If calculated according to this standard, the domestic microwave food industry has a value of approximately RMB 500 billion, a conservative estimate. Even if per capita consumption is 1/5 of the United States, the market value is close to 100 billion yuan.

Based on this, China's first academician workstation in the field of microwave food research, Academician Sun Dawen’s workstation, was established in Midea’s kitchen appliances division, setting six research topics to study microwave food nutrition, storage, detection, thawing, and heating. Achieve microwave food industrial production. It is reported that the first phase of scientific research funds invested by the United States in workstations exceeds 10 million yuan.

Open price war to return to technological innovation

In the home appliances industry, the United States has a history of more than 40 years, but it is a latecomer in the microwave oven industry. At a time when the US microwave oven started at a price. Zhu Fengtao recalled that in the madest hour, “You buy a microwave oven and you can open a tractor to carry gifts.” Today, Galanz and Midea’s two oligarchs monopolize nearly 90% of the domestic microwave oven market and have a global market share. It is also close to 80%.

However, with the increasingly weak consumer market expansion, the price-led profit model has become a thing of the past. The data shows that in the first three quarters of 2012, the cumulative volume of retail sales in the microwave oven market showed a negative year-on-year growth, with a growth rate of -18.24%.

"By continuous and in-depth innovation, Midea microwave ovens have planned a new product pattern for the next three years, and they can be put in place at any time based on changes in the industry environment and market demand, so as to create, create, and lead generations." Zhu Fengtao said.

Since 2012, Midea’s microwave ovens have launched one-off new technology products such as semiconductor microwave ovens, cloud technology microwave ovens, and solar energy microwave ovens. Among them, the solar energy microwave oven has broken through its key technology, can realize the technical solution such as the direct-flow inverter, direct-flow grid-connected and so on, now 4 products have obtained the national compulsory CCC authentication.