Malibu Launches Smart Bottle

By Abraham Joseph –

August 26th – Malibu, the leading coconut-flavoured rum, today announced what the company believes to be the largest global deployment of smart bottles. The bottles will feature near field communications technology and will enhance consumer interaction with the product.

The NFC technology will feature on 40,000 Malibu bottles in the period up to 31st December. The bottles will be sold in 1,600 Tesco stores in the UK in partnership with Internet of Things (IoT) agency SharpEnd.

Consumers can use their mobile browsers to unlock five digital experiences by simply tapping their smartphones against the Malibu sunset. The experiences comprise an instant win competition, a user-generated content competition, a bar locator, playlists from Malibu Mixcloud and drinks recipes.

“By embracing suitable and scalable technologies onto our packaging, we can turn each bottle into a direct, digital touch point for consumers all across the world,” said Markus Wulff, Digital Innovation Manager at Malibu (above).

“Bottles are now able to drive localised content, providing an entirely new way to communicate with consumers and bringing the brand directly in front of their target audience, presenting the opportunity to drive brand loyalty through service delivery,” said Cameron Worth, Founder, SharpEnd (left).

The project is a result of work done through the IoT innovation lab at Malibu’s head office, in Stockholm and is part of an ongoing strategy to engage the company’s target audience of young adults.

Launched at the end of last year, the lab tests scalable growth opportunities for connected products, services and experiences.

Source: Malibu UK

Ayla Networks Forms Strategic Partnership with China’s Midea Group

3 August 2016 – Ayla Networks today announced that it was selected by China’s Midea Group, as the preferred overseas IoT cloud partner for all connected HVAC products.

Midea is a $21 billion manufacturer of consumer appliances and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems and one of China’s largest manufacturers. The company will use the Ayla Networks Internet of Things (IoT) platform to develop connected products and expand into new markets.

Midea joins other Chinese top 10 HVAC manufacturers Hisense, TCL and Chonghong in using Ayla IoT technology and services for their connected products.

“The Ayla IoT platform now powers four of the top 10 HVAC manufacturers in China, which is powerful testimony to Ayla’s IoT leadership and market position,” said David Friedman, CEO and co-founder of Ayla Networks(above). “Midea is an enormously successful and future-thinking enterprise, and we look forward to helping them become a dominant player in the global smart home market.”

“Midea Group laid out its concept for the smart home a long time ago and has established Midea Smart Home Technology Co., Ltd., to focus on the development of that business,” said Li Qiang, general manager of Midea Smart Technology. “This cooperation with Ayla is a major step in the international expansion of Midea Group’s smart home business. As Midea’s third-party cloud platform partner for overseas markets, Ayla will join with Midea to create a globalized structure of intelligent services for smart homes.”

Ayla will work closely with the Midea Smart Technology business unit. The latter has been working on integrating Midea’s technologies and products lines in order to become a total solution provider for the smart home industry.

Midea Smart Technology’s M-Smart System supports diversified smart product within the nearly 50-year-old Midea Group. In addition, Midea Smart Technology is building an M-Smart ecosystem that will provide smart products and solutions to a wide range of business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) enterprises. Already, the Midea Smart Technology’s ecosystem includes Ali Cloud, Amazon, Huawei, IBM, LeTV, TCL, Tencent and Xiaomi.

Source: Ayla Networks