By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 18th, 2024
Chinese competitor to Google and world-known smartphone maker combine their efforts to open up new levels of the Internet of Things.
Two leading Chinese tech companies, internet giant Baidu Inc and consumer electronics company Xiaomi Corp, announced collaboration to develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). This partnership can lead to a massive expansion of innovative technologies and change the manufacturing industry.
Xiaomi has already created remarkable core competence in IoT: according to the latest estimation their smart hardware platform connects more than 85 million connected devices. This company is also developing AI: this year its abilities in this sphere became evident with the launch of the Mi AI Speaker. Baidu is a recognized AI leader well-known for its conversational AI system DuerOS aimed at IoT They claim that more than 130 companies all over the world are already using their technologies. The strategic partnership of these companies is seen as perspective cooperation that can make the most of AI and IoT interaction.
The united efforts of these companies in the sphere of AI and IoT are aimed at delivering better user experience to their customers. IoT has become a long-lasting trend in the modern IT industry. Started as complicated futuristic technology, IoT is now a part of our everyday life. We associate comfortable life with the ecosystem of smart devices. Today it is impossible to conceive IoT development without AI. Both Xiaomi and Baidu are deeply interested in incorporating cutting-edge technologies in everyday life.
The companies have already stated the main spheres of interest. They are going to work on perfecting voice recognition and computer vision. They also announced collaboration on augmented reality and virtual reality. Baidu and Xiaomi are also supposed to work together on knowledge graphs and deep learning.
These tech giants are already changing our understanding of the comfort of everyday life. It looks like now they are trying to set the new standard of user experience. Baidu Vice Chairman, Group President and COO, Qi Lu, said: “the two companies have joined forces in forming a strong partnership to make users’ experience more compelling, moving on to the next stage in AI development.”
He continued: “Xiaomi has accumulated solid experience in smart hardware, big data and established a smart device ecosystem. It is the world’s leading company in the IoT industry. Baidu has strong technological fundamentals in AI, and with Baidu’s conversational AI system DuerOS, we are using our world-leading AI technologies and information ecosystems to support the development of the IoT industry.”
The fact is that Xiaomi and Baidu have already worked together. DuerOS, leading Baidu’s product, is already used in some Xiaomi hardware. And back in 2014 Xiaomi invested $300 million in a video-streaming platform iQiyi created by Baidu. It appears that the two companies have tested each other and became satisfied enough with the result to decide to build trustworthy partnership.
The platform for the official announcement of collaboration was Xiaomi’s first IoT Developer Conference. It is already evident that this partnership will give China a great boost in IoT and AI technologies. Today it is hard to predict at which market the two co-working companies are aimed. Anyway, Xiaomi and Baidu combining their technologies can spur the whole IoT sphere.