Vietnam enters global smarthome industry
The difference between made-in-Vietnam and foreign-made smarthome solutions is that the former can be controlled by demands in Vietnamese, regardless of whether the house owners speak with northern, central or southern accents.
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Joining the market in 2014 and experiencing tough days, Lumi is now a big name in the Vietnamese smarthome market.
Nguyen Duc Tai, CEO of Lumi Vietnam JSC, said the company has signed a contract on exporting products to India, worth US$16 million.
“India is a vast market with population of 1.4 billion, or 15 times higher than Vietnam. There are 60 large cities, including big ones such as Mumbai and New Delhi which are three times larger than Vietnam’s HCM City,” Tai said when explaining the significance of the contract.
Smarthome is a set of solutions to help house owners control the electrical equipment in their houses, such as lighting system, air conditioner, water heater and television through software integrated on their mobile phone or by their voice.
Unlike foreign made smarthome versions, Lumi allows customers to use Vietnamese to operate electrical equipment through smart speakers called Milo. Customers say ‘OK Lumi bat den’ (OK, turn on the light).
Similarly, when they say ‘OK Lumi chao buoi sang’ (Good morning Lumi), the curtain will automatically open.
Milo utilizes artificial intelligence (AI). When people communicate with Milo, the device will automatically record their voice and understand simple sentences.
When Milo becomes more familiar with the voice, it will understand commands.
Lumi solution is the result of research carried out by Tai and two friends. All of them were students at the Hanoi University of Science & Technology.
In 2010-2011, when capacitive technology boomed, they managed to make a touch switch. This was the beginning of Lumi smarthome launched in the market some years later.
After that, they improved the switch so that people can turn on the light from a distance through a remote controller.
Tai and his co-workers decided to take one more step forward by designing a central control unit which acts as the ‘brain’ connecting devices. The Lumi smarthome was then created.
Lumi was the first company in Vietnam that received a CE certificate meeting standards to export products to Europe.
According to Vu Thanh Thang, vice president of BKAV Corporation, also a well known smarthome solution provider, there is a difference between ‘smarthome’ and ‘home automation’.
Smarthome solutions include many advanced technologies and devices, hardware and software, and the artificial intelligence to satisfy the requirements.
