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.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS