From cleaning to entertainment: Haier's AI-enabled home becomes an ecosystem

PARIS - In the double and evocative setting of the Parc des Princes (the stadium of reigning European football champion Paris Saint-German) and Roland Garros (the temple of tennis on red clay), Haier Europe has taken the veil off the new collection of appliances for the intelligent home during an international event - christened not by chance the 'Champions Meeting' - which brought together partners, customers and the media. Not a simple product showcase, as the company's CEO, Neil Tunstall, said, emphasising the strategic centrality of the Haier and Candy brands (for the Group's third brand, Hoover, there is no question of downsizing, at least for now), but a meeting to tell the company's future direction and reiterate its vision of a smart home that is increasingly interconnected and built around the user's needs. The Chinese company is therefore taking another step forward by restarting from its strong position in the large household appliances segment (in which it has been leading the sales charts on a global scale for 17 consecutive years, with a market share of more than 22% in each segment) and focusing on an approach devoted to transforming innovation into a concrete experience. More intuitive, more personalised and increasingly focused on the environment, a feature mirrored in the goal of reducing CO2 emissions from appliance operations by 50% by 2030.

The concept of "Zero Distance to Consumer", repeated several times during the show, is the slogan that sums up Haier's desire to reduce the distance between the real needs of people living at home and the solutions that technology makes available, translating data and habits ("real insights", the definition used by Tunstall) into intelligent functions. In this context, the home ecosystem is no longer a mere sum of next-generation products, but an integrated set of platforms designed to dynamically adapt to users and not vice versa: from cooking to entertainment, from floor cleaning to fabric care, each smart home compartment contributes to building a connected environment where AI, sensors and connectivity work in synergy. The ultimate goal? Twofold: to simplify the daily use of digital devices on the one hand, and to improve their efficiency and sustainability on the other. And to support this message, in addition to the expansion of the product catalogue, there is also a powerful marketing investment plan to support the brand at European level through events, initiatives with channel operators and sponsorships (especially in the sports, tennis and football sectors), quantified in the order of EUR 500 million.

The first lunge dates back to last summer, when Haier introduced itself with trumpet blasts (see the exclusive partnership with Dazn, which accounted for around half of total sales) in the Italia market, the second country after Spain to welcome the Chinese brand's TV sets to Europe. The Paris event brings with it the new 2026 smart TV family, and it is clear that the strategy is to focus decisively on the on-board presence of artificial intelligence and on an almost total coverage of panel technologies (Led and QLed, Mini Led and QD-Mini Led, and finally Oled, with the top of the range C90 series), with formats ranging from 32 to 115 inches of the top model QD-Mini Led. At the heart of the proposal is the Homey AI architecture, an integrated proprietary system that governs the entire operation of the TV and analyses content and environmental conditions in real time to automatically optimise image and sound reproduction parameters. The performance of the device is ensured by the SR Ultra Sense processor co-developed with MediaTek, which coordinates the TV's main functions divided into vision, audio (with support for the Dolby Atmos standard), gaming and visual comfort.

The work of the algorithms manifests itself on several fronts, starting with scene recognition and the consequent dynamic adjustment of contrast, colour and movement; tools such as AI Scene Detection and AI Object intervene to improve sharpness and depth, while Homey AI Eye Caring and Homey AI Sound set brightness and screen parameters according to the ambient light and adapt sound effects in relation to the content displayed, combining with automatic voice separation and volume control. Special attention is also paid to gaming, thanks to the Homey AI Game platform that configures settings according to the type of game (refresh rate is up to 144 Hz and is expandable up to 240 Hz). Lastly, among the technical highlights is the presence of audio systems developed in collaboration with Kef (for the Mini Led and QD-Mini Led models) and Harman Kardon for the Oled models. The direction Haier wants to take in order to conquer a prominent place in an arena populated by other Chinese brands (Hisense and TCL in the lead) and contend with Samsung and Lg for important portions of the market is basically clear: transform the TV into a centralised hub of home entertainment, exploiting applications and capabilities built into the Google TV platform (including voice control) and that with the proprietary hOn app, which extends control of the device within the manufacturer's ecosystem, enabling the user to manage its main functions (and service) directly from a smartphone.

The entry into the floor cleaning segment with the I-Pro Clean family sounds like a strategic step for the Haier brand to complete its domestic offer of intelligent products. Performance and intelligence are the dogmas of a line of appliances whose common distinguishing feature is called "Double Roller", a system that uses two synchronised rollers to remove dirt in both forward and backward movements, improving cleaning efficiency and reducing the number of passes needed: the live test in the demo area held in the belly of the Parc des Princes showed that just one pass was enough to clean a shiny surface soiled with a dense, coloured liquid. These models, Haier spokespersons confirm, are not an adaptation of Hoover devices but products based on a newly developed technological platform combining advanced sensor technology, automatic power regulation and automatic emptying stations.