Chinese e-commerce company JD.com is vying for a slice of the booming connected-devices market by building an open ecosystem that allows products from different manufacturers to work together.

Global technology firms from chip makers to Internet giants and handset manufacturers have been eager to connect  appliances to the Internet and analyze the data. Companies hope the so-called Internet of Things will help reduce energy consumption and boost productivity.

For example, a “smart home” that connects appliances to the Internet would allow customers to control and monitor their lights and TV remotely using a smartphone.

The rise of connected devices poses a new growth opportunity for technology companies. The number of connected intelligent things is expected to rise 30% to 4.9 billion units this year and grow to 25 billion units by 2020, according to research firm Gartner.

“Our ecosystem initiative aims to promote the development of connected devices which would help increase the variety of products and customers on our online sales platform,” JD.com’s smart group president Eric Wang said in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show Asia in Shanghai.

Wang said the company’s smart ecosystem helps startups and hardware companies to build more connected devices by offering incubator- and accelerator-type support to guide them, along with distribution, supply-chain and cloud-computing services.

As part of its effort to tap into the market, Beijing-based JD’s smart business group unveiled Monday a voice-controlled device called DingDong Smart Speaker. The connected speaker pulls news, weather and around three million songs and four million hours of audio content from third-party sources on the Internet and plays them. It can also manage schedules with alarms, calendars and other planning tools, all via voice commands.

The DingDong Smart Speaker is the first product developed by the joint venture that JD formed with China-based voice technology company iFLYTEK in March.

iFLYTEK’s voice-assistant applications support smartphones running on Android and iOS. Its customers include China Mobile–the world’s largest mobile carrier, according to the company’s website.

The new speaker also uses JD’s open-source mobile application Jingdong Weilian, which allows users to control all connected smart devices from manufacturers of the company’s ecosystem.  The application helps different devices to communicate with each other.

JD’s move comes as China’s Internet companies have been striving to expand the services available on their platforms amid rising competition. Both JD and its larger rival Alibaba Group have ventured into financial services and travel-related offerings.

But competition in the connected-things market is intensifying. Other Chinese companies, including Alibaba and Shenzhen-based handset maker TCL Communication Technology, are also investing in integrated software platforms to control connected devices. Alibaba-backed application Peel Technologies allows smartphones to communicate with anything that uses a remote control, including TVs and air conditioners.

“What differentiates JD’s smart ecosystem from others is our knowledge of electronics devices and we can provide a big user data base to help the connected device makers better understand the user demand,” said Wang.

JD.com, which started as a brick-and-mortar electronics retailer, took its business online in 2004 and has expanded to sell products in just about every category, from food to cars and furniture. Like Amazon.com, it has an online marketplace where third-party retailers can take advantage of its 105.2 million users and use its payment systems and logistics operations for a commission.

Wang said more than 100 electronics makers, including TCL, Haier and Hisense, have joined the company’s ecosystem for connected devices since its debut in August. More than 400 connected devices support the Jingdong Weilian application, he said.

Source: The Wall Street Journal