2026 Spring "Focus" Product Plan Released: 12 Smart Hardware Products Selected

Introduction: A Product List Oriented Toward the Future

In the consumer tech space, each season's product iterations continue to redefine the relationship between users and technology. 36Kr has officially released its 2026 Spring "Focus" product plan, with 12 products successfully selected after rigorous screening. The list covers multiple segments including smart hardware, desktop tech, and AI interactive devices, and is regarded by the industry as an important reference for understanding the next phase of consumer tech trends.

This edition of the "Focus" program pays particular attention to the real-world application of AI technology in everyday consumer scenarios. Selected products must not only demonstrate outstanding industrial design and user experience but also showcase the differentiated value that AI enablement brings.

Core Highlights: 12 Products Each with Unique Strengths, Divoom Leading the Desktop Setup Trend

Among the 12 selected products, Divoom attracted widespread attention with its "Desktop Setup Bundle" series. As a brand deeply rooted in pixel culture and smart audio, Divoom has been continuously integrating AI capabilities into desktop smart devices in recent years, building a complete desktop ecosystem covering pixel-screen speakers, smart alarm clocks, ambient lighting controls, and more.

Based on previously released review videos, the core selling points of the Divoom Desktop Setup Bundle lie in two major capabilities: "AI pixel art generation" and "multi-device smart linkage." Users can describe what they want in natural language, allowing the built-in AI to automatically generate pixel-style dynamic patterns and sync them in real time across multiple Divoom devices on their desk. This approach of deeply combining generative AI with physical hardware gives desktop products — which were previously more decorative in nature — stronger interactivity and personalization potential.

Beyond Divoom, the selected products also span multiple directions including AI-driven smart office accessories, portable terminals with local large model inference capabilities, and next-generation AI-assisted tools for creators. The 36Kr "Focus" program review panel stated that this season's selection criteria were elevated across three dimensions — technological innovation, user experience completeness, and market potential — ultimately narrowing down from over 200 candidate products to these 12.

Analysis: AI Moves from the Cloud to the Desktop as Consumer Hardware Reaches a New Inflection Point

From this edition's "Focus" selection list, a clear trend emerges — AI is accelerating its penetration from cloud-based applications to terminal hardware, and the "desktop" is becoming one of the most important scenarios in this wave.

Over the past two years, the explosion of large language models and generative AI has been concentrated primarily at the software and cloud services level. However, as edge AI chip computing power improves and model lightweight technologies mature, an increasing number of hardware manufacturers are exploring ways to embed AI capabilities directly into consumer-grade devices. Divoom's pixel art AI generation, smart speakers' local voice understanding, and office accessories' AI scene awareness are all concrete manifestations of this trend.

Notably, this wave of AI hardware differs fundamentally from previous smart hardware booms. Earlier smart hardware was largely defined by "connected means smart," with core reliance on cloud services. Today's AI hardware, by contrast, emphasizes local inference, personalized adaptation, and cross-device collaboration. Taking the Divoom desktop ecosystem as an example, the linkage between its devices is not simple command forwarding but rather AI learning based on user habits, capable of automatically adjusting lighting ambiance, audio modes, and display content to create a truly "smart desktop."

From a market perspective, the desktop scenario has become a breakthrough point for AI hardware due to its high-frequency usage, strong personalization demands, and relatively controllable cost structure. Compared to whole-home smart home deployments or the extreme lightweight requirements of wearable devices, desktop products offer more flexibility in size, power consumption, and pricing, making them better suited to carry current-stage edge AI capabilities.

Industry analysts point out that since the second half of 2025, the "light AI hardware" category represented by desktop smart devices has seen significant growth, with some leading brands achieving quarterly sales increases of over 60% year-over-year. This also explains why desktop and office-related AI products account for a considerable proportion of this "Focus" plan.

Outlook: The "Focus" Program May Accelerate Market Education for AI Consumer Products

Since its launch, the 36Kr "Focus" product plan has become a highly influential product discovery platform in China's consumer tech space. For selected brands, this means not only media exposure and channel resource support but, more importantly, a window for in-depth dialogue with early adopters.

For the entire AI consumer products sector, professional screening and recommendation mechanisms like the "Focus" program are playing an increasingly important "market education" role. One of the biggest challenges currently facing the AI hardware market is not the technology itself but user awareness — many consumers still struggle to distinguish "real AI" from "fake intelligence" and remain unclear about what tangible improvements AI features can bring to daily use. Through professional reviews and authoritative endorsement, the "Focus" program is poised to help quality products reach their target users more efficiently.

Looking ahead to 2026, as edge large model capabilities continue to strengthen and hardware costs keep declining, the category boundaries of AI consumer products will continue to expand. From desktops to portable devices, from office to daily life, AI-powered hardware innovation is weaving an increasingly dense network. Within this network, whoever can first find the intersection of technological capability and genuine user needs will be positioned to seize the market advantage in the next phase.

The 12 products selected in this "Focus" program may well be among the earliest signals of this transformation.