China is drafting mandatory national standards to force interoperability among smart home devices, reports Caixin. The move is aimed at dismantling the closed technological ecosystems that have long fragmented the consumer appliance market.
For years, major appliance makers have adopted closed-ecosystem strategies to lock in users, preventing devices from different brands from communicating with one another. As a result, consumers who purchase smart appliances from multiple companies often must install several apps and use different voice commands, creating a fragmented user experience.
The upcoming mandatory rule marks a significant escalation in efforts to break down these “walled gardens.” Previous attempts—including a group standard in 2021, an industry standard in 2024, and a recommended national standard that took effect in February 2026—were voluntary and failed to change the industry’s siloed landscape. The new plan signals a shift toward enforcement to resolve a bottleneck that has slowed the sector’s progress toward more sophisticated, AI-driven automation.