Xiaomi Corp (小米) unveiled a new product called the Smart Home Suite with a group of four components that offer security features as it broadens its range of devices that can be controlled by mobile phone.
The suite includes a human motion sensor and a pair of door and window sensors that can be used for home security, Xiaomi president Bin Lin (林斌) said yesterday at the GeekPark Innovation Festival in Beijing. The company is to start a consumer test of the product next Monday, he said.
“In the past, motion sensors were very complicated and large in size, so that if you wanted a system, you needed professional installation,” Lin told the conference. “For this suite, there is not a single nail or wire. These components are all very simple.”
In less than five years, Xiaomi has grown to become the world’s third-largest smartphone vendor and, at US$45 billion, the most-valuable technology startup.
Now, chief executive officer Lei Jun (雷軍) is pushing into Web-enabled devices for the home even as it challenges Samsung Electronics Corp and Apple Inc at the higher end of the mobile-device market.
The suite also offers a wireless switching device for controlling appliances, and a multifunctional gateway that links the components with other devices by Wi-Fi, allowing control by mobile phone.
The market for Internet-connected appliances is set to grow to US$7.1 trillion by 2020, from US$1.9 trillion last year, market researcher International Data Corp said.
Xiaomi, which means millet in Chinese, was founded in 2010 to make software for mobile devices running Google Inc’s Android system. The company subsequently released products including a tablet computer, a television set-top box and TVs that connect to the Web.
Other previously announced home products from Xiaomi include an air purifier that sends pollution readings to mobile phones and alerts users when its filter is dirty, and a light bulb that can change colors by remote control.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day