SMART CITY

MICHAEL YEH – VICE PRESIDENT, ACER BEING COMMUNICATION

Most IoT Platforms Focus (by Segment)

Michael illustrated that IoT can be divided into 2 categories; consumer IoT and business IoT. He displayed the figure of IoT platform market percentage as follows

  • Consumer IoT – home (21%), lifestyle (8%), mobility (8%) and health (5%)
  • Business IoT – manufacturing (32%), smart cities (22%), energy (21%), mobility (20%), health (16%), supply chain (16%), retail, public services (14%) and other business (9%)

Acer solutions

Michael moved on to discuss about solutions that Acer Being Communication is delivering. The company mainly provides device and sensor products. Acer stated that they also provide full support service which differentiates them from other competitors. The company additionally offers IoT information access point and it provides gateway that can connect to various network providers. Facility and its application are another business solution they are currently providing, the solutions are Wi-Fi charging station, smart parking, smart traffic monitoring, smart city, smart food and smart water. The last focused business is IoT cloud platform and big data. Acer provides data integration, professional analysis and index measurement services.

Smart City Solutions for Thailand 4.0

As Thailand is stepping towards 4.0 roadmap, Acer has offered solutions to support industries in many areas below

  • Smart industrial
    • Applied on smart factory system
    • Tracking system for all logistic starting from entrance sensor
    • Dashboard monitoring system for cycle time of mechanism to measure machine maintenance status and productivity
  • Smart waterworks
    • Water meter – Appliance sensor on water meter with camera, convert meter data and send to water authority
    • Water quality (dam, river, lake) – detecting sensor for pH, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, salinity and ammonium
  • Smart flood monitor
    • Flood level monitoring sensor – detecting water level and soil moisture to identify capability to drain water via simulation
  • Smart electric
    • Smart billing – analogue detection appliance to collect meter data
    • Smart substation – breaker abnormal discharge detection and unusual signal auto feedback
    • Smart street lighting – Apply on solar power control system via Lora solution or NBIoT
  • Smart parking
    • Parking lot solution – identify available parking space, detect registration plate, charge parking fee to e-billing, pre-book parking lot
    • Case study: Pre-book parking lot allows a department store to identify arriving customers and be able to offer related personalized ads to those customers
  • Smart economy
    • Electric shelve – allow branch stores to accurately auto update product price at the same time
  • Smart trash can
    • Disneyland analyzes amount of trash in each zone to identify amusement, and classify type of trash for F&B improvement
  • AI Solution
    • Interactive dashboard – ability process natural language/ voice command

SMART PHONE, SMART HOME

JOHN CHEN – REGIONAL DIRECTOR, XIAOMI CORPORATION

Xiaomi Business Solutions

Xiaomi Corporation is a Chinese company focusing on being the most user-centric mobile internet company, and aiming to constantly exceed expectations through innovations in software, hardware and services. Its mission is to bring mobile and mobile internet innovation to everyone with the strategy to offer quality product at affordable price. Xiaomi business models are focusing on 3 areas, internet platform, hardware and new retail.

John pointed out that core strategy is to exceed customer expectation and make sure the word of mouth is spread to each individual at the fastest speed as fast as possible. Xiaomi realized the importance of customer experience and customer centric concept, their strategies are offering quality products, treating customers with speed, using social media as a channel to reach individual and creating Mi community to make friend with users.

Xiaomi’s hardware and appliance are taking more market shares. The company has become world’s no 4 smartphone brand driving with their flagship products; Mi Phone and Redmi Phone. John stated that the company use the strategy to provide quality innovation product with affordable price. Lei Jun, CEO has stated that net profit will not exceed 5% for hardware devices, people can enjoy almost at cost price and extra profit will be returned to users in term of promotion and other values.

John further discussed about Mi Ecosystem that covers various area for examples smart home, robots, automobile, wearables, vehicles, kid products etc. Xiaomi therefore engages partner companies to co-develop products; laptop, phone accessories, smart home and other lifestyle products.

Xiaomi targets at individual consumer not enterprise, its business approach will reach everyone. By the term of everyone, Xiaomi is developing their products to capture individual lifestyle like living appliances and make their lives more convenient in Mi Ecosystem.

Xiaomi hardware solutions are focusing on 3 areas;

  • Security – Every device (security camera, smoke sensor, door & window sensor, smart socket) connect to one gateway.
  • Healthy life – Water & air purifier, vacuum cleaner, sonic toothbrush, fitness band will enhance better health of users.
  • Atmosphere/entertainment/convenience – Story teller for kids, smart rice cookers, smart lamp and other home appliances offer convenient and good environment to lifestyle.

Mi home application is an all-in-one device controlling platform. Users can connect all Xiaomi devices to the application and can manage devices and appliances at anywhere and anytime.

Retail is another business model Xiaomi is running, the company first launch online store in 2011 and after it became successful, the company decided to expand retail business by opening Mi Home Store; an offline store that offers quality products with the same price rate as online store. This aimed to provide enjoyable shopping experience and to expand market by approaching customers who are not on online platform.

SOCIAL IMPACT FROM A HYPER LOCALIZED PLATFORM

PINYA NITTAYAKASETWAT – CO-FOUNDER & CEO, GET

Who is GET?

GET is an on-demand application, driven by a Thai founding team, with GO-JEK providing world-class technology, knowledge and expertise as well as investment. GET will provide a range of services for Thais, starting with transportation-based services.

(Go-JEK’s background – The company is a unicorn startup providing ride-hailing service, expanding throughout region by partnering with local companies)

Market situation in Thailand

Pinya shared an interesting fact to the audiences that Thailand has high mobile penetration rate (71%) but ride-hailing penetration rate is 3.6% who is early adopters. Although there are 96.4% on-demand platform opportunity in Thailand, there are still challenges to this business as per the unfamiliarity for most Thai users to accept the service platform and unclear information and instruction of the service. Pinya raised his solution that more than one ride-hailing player will encourage more users to adopt the service.

GET’s key success

Pinya further discussed about key success to business that it requires good and global technology as well as capital to create awareness towards ride-hailing service. Another factor is culture, GET believes that their partner company should be able to understand localization well. Pinya realized that the collaboration between GET and Go-JEK could address GETs’ passions to create more value for society, promoting efficiency and productivity and improving financial inclusion from hyper-localized platform, to facilitate lifestyle with access to products and services and also to provide safe ride from origin to destination

GET’s hyper localization concept

GET has set up operation team who understand localization concept to approach and communicate with local driver services to have aligned perspective with its business. The company is also opened for any synergy possibility with government, agency and startups to collaborate and design powerful ride-hailing platform.

THE FUTURE OF MOBILITY IS ELECTRIC

VINCENT WIJNEN – SVP OF MARKETING AND SALES ASIA AND OCEANIA, NISSAN

Vincent started his presentation with an idea that role of car has been changing, it is not just a tool to brings passenger from origin to destination but Nissan is committed to provide enjoyable, safe and stable driving experience to build connection among cars, people and society.

Nissan Intelligent Mobility – Move People to Smarter and Better World

  • Intelligent power – shift from conventional to fully-electric or hybrid vehicles
  • Intelligent driving – features to make driving safer and more enjoyable
  • Intelligent integration – integrate car with individual and society

Electrification

Moreover, Nissan is not aiming to put high technology into unaffordable vehicles but it is aiming to have everyone experience the technology benefits. Vincent introduced the audience with electrification concept that was applied to the new Nissan Leaf; a fully electric vehicle that charging is done through small building gasoline engine. From a research, 1 in 3 consumers in SEA are opened to buy electric car as their next vehicle, so Nissan decided to study Thai market and plan to bring Nissan Leaf to Thailand.
Autonomous

Nissan stated that it would like to provide people with options; to drive or to be driven. Nissan has developed propilot project under belief that being driven in a smart vehicle help people to do other things rather than driving, especially when people have to get stuck with traffic. The propilot drive technology can operate single lane driving on a high road, use advanced image processing to understand roads and traffic situations. Another Nissan technology that can fulfill autonomous driving is propilot parking, it is a system with automated function to locate a parking lot and allows a car to park itself.
Future project

Vincent further unveiled that Nissan is developing Brain to Vehicle technology implementing in Nissan IMx model. The technology enables vehicles to interpret signals from the driver’s brain, redefining how people interact with their cars. The company is expecting to speed up reaction times for drivers and will lead to cars that keep adapting to make driving more enjoyable.

Source: Blognone Tomorrow