Alibaba, Midea Partner on Smart Appliances
Sina Tech, 3/17/14
Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group and Chinese home appliance maker Midea have signed a partnership agreement through which the two sides will jointly construct an internet-of-things (IOT) open platform based on Alibaba's AliCloud cloud service, allowing users to communicate with and remotely control their home appliances. Midea has also announced its first line of AliCloud-based smart air conditioners (8 models in total), to be released on March 19 on Alibaba's B2C e-commerce site TMall.
According to Wu Wenxin, executive VP at Midea and president of the company's air conditioner division, Midea and Alibaba's strategic partnership will be implemented in three phases. In 2014, the two companies will construct a unified standard for using and communicating with IOT products, allowing for access and control of Midea's IOT-enable appliances. In 2015, the companies will digitalize operations and integrate users' behavior data to improve product development and production. In 2016, the companies will build out their smart appliance product lines, integrating data from existing product lines in order to provide superior value-added apps and services. Midea and Alibaba will also open up related protocol standards to provide API ports to third-party app developers, and launch an open IOT platform, which will support control of smart appliances from hundreds of millions of devices.
According to the agreement, Midea will utilize IOT smart technology in all of its new air conditioner models starting in 2014. The company plans for more than 50% of its air conditioners to feature IOT functionality in three years. In the future, all of Midea's product lines will be able to access Alibaba's cloud platform.
Midea has released an air conditioner control app. The app allows users to control their air conditioners with voice commands, monitor daily power consumption, and set different temperatures for different times of day. An engineer at Alibaba has revealed that, as early as April, users will be able to control their air conditioners from within Alibaba's own apps, including the company's mobile instant messaging app Laiwang and its third-party payment processor Alipay. In the future, after-sales services and product diagnoses will available through Laiwang. Users will be able to communicate with customer service representatives, diagnose product malfunctions, and schedule a technician to come and repair the appliance, completing payment via Alipay.
Keywords: M2M hardware home appliances Midea AliCloud smart appliance
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