Chipmaker MediaTek taps into connected home appliance market

June 12, 2014 Leave a comment

June 3, 2014 2:02 pm

Chipmaker MediaTek taps into connected home appliance market

By Daniel Thomas, Telecoms Correspondent

Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek plans to tap into the growing market for connected home appliances and wearable products with technology designed to help make devices for the so-called “internet of things”.

The company will make its first step into the market for connected home products, with components to support devices from connected fridges and TVs to cameras, smart bulbs, plugs and locks.

MediaTek has also developed a separate software platform to open its technology for developers of wearable technology such as connected watches and jewellery, another nascent “internet of things” market.

The move comes as Apple gave its full backing to connected home and wearable technology on Tuesday, by showing off its platform for controlling smart-home devices as well as health applications that can be used by watches and fitness bands.

MediaTek could help expand this market alongside the more premium products and services likely to be made by Apple. The Taiwanese group has already helped bring down the price and broaden availability in its traditional market of making smartphone components.

MediaTek makes equipment mainly for Asian phonemakers such as Lenovo, ZTE, Coolpad and Xiaomi, which are growing sales rapidly in emerging markets with low-cost smartphones that offer features similar to higher priced phones in the market.

Some of these groups are already looking at making wearable devices, with smart watches planned by groups such as ZTE and Huawei that could beat the long promised product from Apple.

MediaTek announced its first products for the smart home market at a trade show in Taiwan on Tuesday.

MediaTek estimates that there will be 26bn “internet of things” devices by 2020. They will enable appliances connected to the internet to function remotely, controlled with a smart device or on their own.

Analysts predict the smart home appliances market will grow rapidly, with Apple developing a software platform that would allow its devices to control the home remotely. Electronics groups such as Philips already manufacture smart lightbulbs, switches and accessories.

MediaTek has developed two sorts of chips, with one aimed at powering more complicated and data intensive smart home appliances such as cameras and home surveillance systems and another for devices needing less effort such as smart plugs, lights and sensors.

The group has also developed a single interface compatible with all smartphones that can control different smart home appliances.

MediaTek is also making strides into the wearable technology market with a software platform that uses chips made by the group that will be open to the developer community. The group believes this will mean that a broader range of affordable wearable and internet of things products can be made more easily and cheaply.

Marc Naddell, vice-president of MediaTek Labs, which is leading the open software strategy, said the technology was optimised for wearable devices by being “very small and cost competitive”.

 

Filed under Macro Trends, TMT Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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