70% of Elevators Monopolized by Foreign Capital, Chinese Enterprises Find Breakthrough

Ask AI · Midea’s Cross-Industry Elevator Manufacturing: How Does Intelligent Technology Challenge Foreign Giants?

As the “vertical artery” of city operation, elevators have long been integrated into every corner of office buildings, residences, and transportation hubs.

Few people know that this industry closely related to people’s livelihoods still sees 70% of its market share monopolized by foreign brands.

According to industry statistics, by 2025, China’s elevator market size will surpass 680 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 12.3%, maintaining its position as the world’s largest producer, consumer, and exporter of elevators.

In the total new elevator market for the year, foreign brands account for as much as 70%.

Market share of foreign brands in new elevator installations in 2025

Domestic brands account for only about 30%, mostly concentrated in old community renovations and lower-end scenarios in county markets.

In the high-end market, foreign giants still hold the dominant voice, and domestic brands still face a significant gap.

Now, Chinese elevator players have found a breakthrough.

Recently, Midea officially launched the industry’s first proactive intelligent elevator, directly challenging the longstanding dominance of foreign giants in the market.

Many readers might wonder, how did Midea, deeply rooted in home appliances, also start making elevators?

In fact, as early as 2020, Midea entered the elevator market by acquiring the Chinese local elevator brand Lingwang Elevator.

In 2024, Midea further invested in acquiring Toshiba Elevator’s Chinese holding rights, including Toshiba Elevator (China) Co., Ltd. and Toshiba Elevator (Shenyang) Co., Ltd., gaining access to the Toshiba brand, technology, and global channels.

Currently, Midea has formed three major brand systems:

Lingwang Elevator (WINONE), emphasizing professionalism, mainly targeting commercial/public buildings. LINVOL, Midea’s own brand, focusing on intelligence and IoT. Toshiba Elevator, targeting the high-end market.

The intelligent elevator released by Midea this time is a proactive intelligent elevator based on the core technology platform of Midea’s MevoX self-evolving intelligent agent.

Midea Launches Proactive Intelligent Elevator

The term “smart” + “proactive” indicates that this elevator differs from the industry norm of simply adding basic intelligent functions like voice and display to traditional products. Instead, it relies on MevoX to build a comprehensive proactive intelligent system that understands people, scenes, and emotions through proactive understanding, collaboration, protection, and evolution.

In simple terms, traditional smart elevators are “passively responsive,” while Midea’s new smart elevator will “actively serve.”

At the launch event, Midea emphasized the “full-house intelligent scene loop” of “people, vehicles, homes + elevators.”

The elevator is deeply integrated with Midea’s home appliances, vehicle systems, and door lock systems. It not only supports intelligent devices like robotic vacuum cleaners to automatically take the elevator for cross-floor tasks but also enables one-click homecoming linkage with all household devices, transforming the elevator from a mere transportation tool into an essential part of the smart ecosystem.

Regarding safety, in case of emergencies or power outages, the system automatically generates a one-time rescue password, breaking through traditional rescue space limitations.

This feature is highly attractive to users with home-installed elevators.

However, a key question arises: as elevators are critical safety equipment related to life safety, safety is always the top priority. Will smart technology introduce new safety risks?

After all, the higher the level of intelligence, the more complex the system, and the potential for faults seems to increase.

In fact, the core of elevator intelligence is not to sacrifice safety for smart experiences but to “enhance safety and efficiency.”

Traditional elevators rely on regular inspections for safety, while intelligent elevators achieve “real-time monitoring, early warning, and rapid response.” Essentially, safety protection is upgraded from “passive defense” to “active protection.”

This not only eliminates safety risks but also further improves the safety and reliability of elevator operation.

We can find evidence of this from the smart practices of the national power grid.

As a critical infrastructure related to national livelihood, the safety of the power grid is as important as that of elevators. Its smart upgrade has not brought safety hazards but significantly increased power supply reliability.

Today, the national grid has fully promoted intelligent inspections. Drones can autonomously fly to inspect transmission lines, intelligent inspection robots monitor substations 24/7, and sensors in underground cable tunnels transmit real-time operational data, building an integrated “air-ground-space” inspection system. This upgrades traditional manual inspections from “post-incident handling” to “early warning,” fundamentally changing the traditional power grid operation and maintenance model, and using intelligence to strengthen grid security.

National Power Grid Intelligent Inspection Robot

This logic is highly consistent with elevator intelligence.

For a long time, competition in China’s elevator industry has focused on mechanical manufacturing, capacity scale, and channel layout.

Foreign giants, with their century-old technological accumulation, have established insurmountable barriers in core components and high-end scenarios.

With the iteration of AI large models and embodied intelligence development, the elevator industry is entering a critical stage of “intelligent reconstruction,” which is where Chinese companies like Midea have a core advantage.

Domestic leader Kone Elevator has developed an intelligent elevator with an embedded AI-capable edge computing box, equipped with high-definition cameras and smart screens. Multimodal sensing technology combines image recognition, gravity sensing, and voice interaction, making elevators warm companions and safety guardians.

Kone Elevator

Giant Electric independently developed a cloud-edge integrated smart elevator solution.

By stepping out of the “follow and imitate” trap, they are entering the “smart ecosystem” track.

Chinese companies have found a breakthrough to break the foreign monopoly.

The right solution is provided by leading industry and finance new media, a research-oriented think tank focusing on Chinese industrial economy and urban development, established in 2018. They analyze urban competitiveness, corporate development paths, and macroeconomic trends from an industry perspective, with the core idea of “interpreting industry, discovering value.”