Instantaneous (also known as fast-heating) electric water heaters, which once experienced rapid development, have fallen into development bottlenecks in the past two years. 7%-8%. As a niche product, subject to various unfavorable factors such as high power, high price, environmental restrictions on electricity use, lack of technical standards and regulations, and gradual loss of consumer confidence, the market volume continues to shrink, and the overall sales in 2013 has been less than 800,000 units. , the situation is very embarrassing.
In fact, at present, the manufacturers of instantaneous electric water heaters are mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, mainly concentrated in Huzhou, Zhejiang, Zhongshan, Foshan and other places in Guangdong. Although there are a lot of them, they are mixed, and many micro and small enterprises and even family workshops have small production capacity. Taking Altram, which currently has a market share of 35% in the instantaneous electric water heater market, as an example, the production capacity in 2013 was only 200,000 units, which was basically the same as the annual sales volume. In addition to Altram, I believe that other mainstream brands of instant electric water heaters on the market are not well known, such as Harvard, Knox, Hannover, Jiayuan, Taier, Grimes, Belleffe and so on.
However, as an important branch of electric water heaters, in the future, with the improvement of the electricity environment, the gradual regulation of industry standards and the continuous improvement of its own technical level, the instant electric water heaters will rely on fashionable and compact appearance, fast hot water and no trouble. Unique advantages such as water restrictions will still occupy a place in the industry.
On the other hand, in order to solve the disadvantages of traditional storage-type electric water heaters, such as the long preheating time and the inability to use hot water continuously, many mainstream brands have been competing to integrate the concept of "fast heating" into traditional storage-type electric water heaters in the past two years. In 2013, when consumer demand was upgraded and the quality of life was improved, comprehensive improvements were made in terms of appearance, internal technology and user-friendly performance. The increasingly fierce market competition has also caused many mainstream electric water heater brands to focus more on product research and development.
For example: Haier's 3D rapid heating, Midea's "Tech healthy living water" system, A.O. Smith's MAX heat storage capacity expansion function and AES adaptive energy-saving system, Siemens' Navi intelligent rapid heating system, Ariston's silver network antibacterial, Macro Many innovative technical highlights, such as the "dual-engine" rapid heating, Altram's "multi-mode" heating, and Wanhe's double anti-electric shield system are attached to the "instant heating" electric water heater. The technical point of "fast heating" is to further increase the water output and increase the heating speed by changing and adjusting the internal structure and technology without changing the power. Among them, it is not difficult to find that in addition to the concept of "fast heating", health, comfort, intelligence, safety, individuality and fashion and many other elements that meet the needs of consumers in all aspects have gradually become several key words for mainstream electric water heater products.
From the perspective of product volume, driven by the demand for multi-channel water supply in households, large-capacity products have grown rapidly. Among them, the retail sales of 60-liter storage-type electric water heaters accounted for about 30%, an increase of 3 percentage points compared with 2012.