By 2025, 70% of China's electrical appliances will be upgraded to smart products, announced Wei Ku, vice president of Alibaba, at a forum themed around “AI with smart life” at the World Artificial Intelligent Conference 2020 held in Shanghai.

(Wei Ku gives a speech at the World Artificial Intelligent Conference 2020)

Mr. Ku revealed that an AI+ IoT (AIoT) innovation center will be set up this year to integrate Alibaba’s technology so as to help the home appliance industry achieve faster intelligent upgrades, which is expected to bring more than 10 billion RMB of new output value to the industry each year.

Data shows that the annual output value growth of smart appliances is five times that of the entire appliance industry. However, for many small and medium-sized home appliance manufacturers, the R&D investment in AIoT technology is the biggest cost to achieve intelligent upgrades.

"We have successfully reduced the R&D threshold of smart home appliances to about 500,000 yuan from 10 million yuan, greatly improving the upgrade speed of the industry," said Mr. Ku.