Global technology leader Xiaomi today announced at its annual MIDC conference a strategic partnership with IKEA. IKEA’s full range of smart lighting products will be connected to Xiaomi’s IoT platform starting this December in China. This marks the first time IKEA has partnered with a Chinese technology company.
A pioneer in AI and Internet of Things (IoT), Xiaomi IoT platform has connected more than 132 million smart devices (excluding mobile phones and laptops), and has more than 20 million daily active devices in more than 200 countries and regions around the world, as of September 30. This is according to data released at the conference by Lei Jun, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Corporation. Xiaomi Xiao Ai voice assistant has cumulatively been activated on about 100 million devices, with monthly active users exceeding 34 million and cumulative wake-up times exceeding 8 billion.
Fan Dian, General Manager of the IoT platform department of Xiaomi, said, “IKEA and Xiaomi share very similar values and I believe our cooperation will accelerate the development of the smart home industry across the world.”
Anna Pawlak-Kuliga, CEO and president of IKEA Retail China said she believes the two companies will benefit greatly from the partnership, better enabling both to serve customers worldwide with smarter solutions at home.
Starting in China in December, IKEA’s full range of smart lighting products will be connected to Xiaomi IoT platform and can be controlled via Xiaomi products, including Xiao Ai voice assistant and the Mi Home app. The lights can also be paired to other Xiaomi IoT smart devices such as sensors and electrical appliances for smart scene management. The smart lighting products will be connected to Mi Control Hub through the ZigBee protocol.
In addition to IKEA, Xiaomi also announced in-depth cooperation with Ji Hotel, CHJ Automotive and Ikongjian, an interior decoration company. These partnerships involve a full range of Xiaomi smart IoT devices that can be applied to different scenarios.
Further opening up AIoT possibilities for third-party developers
Since the inaugural MIDC conference in 2017, Xiaomi has been developing initiatives for developers to take advantage of the opportunities in AI and IoT. The Xiaomi IoT Developer Program was first launched last year, giving third-party developers access to the Mi Home platform for controlling smart home scenarios with cloud + AI + big data capabilities.
In the past year, over 1,000 third-party products have successfully been incorporated to the Xiaomi IoT platform, which has accumulated over 1,000 enterprise developers and more than 7,000 individual developers, allowing Xiao Ai voice assistant to perform over 1,300 types of tasks. Xiaomi has also started new initiatives for developers to take advantage of the opportunities in AI and IoT. For more information, please visit the Xiaomi IoT Developer Website.
This year, Xiaomi continues to open up AIoT possibilities. The company announced at the conference that it will invest RMB 100 million to build the “Xiaomi AIoT Developer Fund”, which will be used to support AI developers, hardware equipment manufacturers and AI technology companies.
Xiaomi also released Mi Smart Door Lock, which adopts integrated 3D live fingerprint recognition. It also supports six unlocking means including password, NFC and Bluetooth.
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