Apple joins hands with Haier on developing smart home
- By Zhang Fang
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E-mail China.org.cn, June 18, 2014
Apple Inc. will partner with China's top home electrics and appliances maker Haier to promote its new Home app and service for smart appliances, lights and locks.
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Apple Inc. will partner with China's top home electrics and appliances maker Haier to promote its new Home app and service for smart appliances, lights and locks. [File photo] |
The company announced the framework, called HomeKit, at its World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco on June 2, which can use Siri voice commands to control individual or groups of connected home devices.
Haier is the only Chinese brand among Apple's nine partners. The others are Texas Instruments, Philips, Netamo, Withings, Honeywell, Marvel, Osram and Broadcom.
Haier started its smart home developing platform with the help of an enormous consumer market and global support. In March, Haier unveiled an operating system named "U+ Smart living", through which users can use all smart home appliances wirelessly.
Li Li, director of Haier's U-home Department, said the cooperation with Apple will include end products and software, which will be available for Homekit users.
The partnership will start with air conditioning or air purifiers.
"Our new air purifiers will help users living in smoggy areas deal with the issue," said Li.
A new report from Juniper Research has valued the smart home market at US $60 billion by 2017, an increase from US $25 billion in 2012. This growth attracted many industrial giants to the market.
"If home companies take smart home as their main developing direction, the area will increase its market share between 10 and 20 percent in two to three years among all the home appliances and home services. Li said.
"However, we don't have a technical standard system yet in the area of smart homes, so the market is limited by various technique systems. The participation of international companies like Apple and Google to this market will speed up the technology competition and integration," she added.
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