In 2024, the capacity of China's central air conditioning market decreased by 12.5% year-on-year, marking the largest decline in the market's history and presenting an overall "wave like decline" trend. On a quarterly basis, the market performance in the first quarter was relatively stable, with a slight increase in sales of engineering projects and home decoration retail compared to the same period last year. The home decoration retail market began to decline in the second quarter, and the growth rate of the engineering market slowed down. In the third quarter, both engineering projects and home decoration retail channels were sluggish, with a particularly significant decline in home decoration retail. Although some demand was stimulated by national subsidy policies in the fourth quarter, the overall trend continued to decline.
Faced with the unknown 2025, many people are concerned whether central air conditioning will rebound? For this purpose, the reporter from Refrigeration Express interviewed several industry insiders to see what their views are? A dealer with decades of experience believes that current global economic fluctuations, inflation, or recession may suppress investment in commercial and residential buildings, thereby affecting the market demand for central air conditioning; The price increase of key raw materials such as refrigerants, copper, and aluminum may increase production costs, leading to a rise in central air conditioning prices and suppressing market demand. However, more industry insiders still hold an optimistic view. On the one hand, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance jointly released the "2025 Implementation of Large scale Equipment Renewal and Consumer Goods Trade in Policy", which will increase the number of household appliances eligible for trade in subsidies from 8 categories to 12 categories, and central air conditioning (including household central air conditioning and air ducts) will be included in the national subsidy category. This will stimulate consumers' demand for central air conditioning, thereby prompting companies to increase production and sales. Especially in the central and western regions of China, the market potential is enormous. With the improvement of infrastructure construction and the improvement of residents' consumption levels, the market growth rate in these regions is expected to exceed that of the eastern regions. On the other hand, emerging markets overseas (such as Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, etc.) have seen a continuous increase in demand for air conditioning equipment as their economies develop and living standards improve. In addition, energy-saving, environmentally friendly, and intelligent products will become mainstream in the market. Faced with the unknown year of 2025, central air conditioning companies need to increase research and development investment and promote the optimization of product structure towards high-efficiency energy-saving products such as frequency conversion and intelligence.