Asia Pacific Telecom Co (APT, 亞太電信) yesterday said that it is mulling selling Japanese telecom Softbank Corp’s Pepper humanoid robots in Taiwan next year in an effort to expand its value-added services.
The robot, developed by Softbank and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), yesterday made its Taiwanese debut at Asia Pacific’s flagship store in the Syntrend Creative Park (三創).
“Pepper’s first appearance is supported by Softbank... We are training the robot to speak Chinese and working on Japanese-Chinese romanization of the applications,” Asia Pacific chairman Lu Fang-ming (呂芳銘) told reporters. “We need to work with local application developers to build a bigger knowledge base for Pepper so that it can be used in different industries.”
Photo: CNA
In Japan, Nestle cafe use Peppers to sell coffee and the robots also help telecoms sell their services, Lu said.
In Taiwan, Asia Pacific aims to expand the services to education and as a companion to elderly people, he said.
Asia Pacific is to partner with Syntrend and hold a contest to develop applications for the robots that are suitable for local industries, Syntrend chairman Jeff Gou (郭守正) said yesterday.
Gou Shou-cheng is the son of Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘).
Asked when the robots would be available in Taiwan, Lu said: “We hope to introduce Pepper to the Taiwanese market as soon as possible, but we need more time to build a knowledge-based software platform for human-robot interactions.”
“We will strive to” sell the robot next year, he said.
It took about a year for Softbank to ship Pepper robots after their launch, Lu said.
“A lot of companies in different industries have expressed an interest in Pepper,” he said.
On Thursday, Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) president James Jeng (鄭俊卿) said he was very interested in the humanoid robot and hoped to hire some for use at the company’s stores.
Commenting on Asia Pacific’s business outlook for next year, Lu said the company aims to double the number of its 4G subscribers from this year’s 700,000 by luring subscribers from local rivals.
Lu said the company’s capital spending next year would be on par with this year’s NT$6 billion (US$181.81 million) and most would be used to deploy small cell base stations for its newly acquired 4G 2.6-gigahertz bandwidth.
The new 4G network is set to start commercial operations in the second quarter of next year, he said.
Asia Pacific also plans to invest an unspecified amount on developing 5G technology next year and the year after, Lu said.
The company aims to expand its 5G workforce to 200 people from more than 100 and it is also working with other institutions to develop 5G technology, he said.
He expects 5G networks to start commercial operations in 2020 in line with most global telecoms’ expectations.
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