Midea partners with NXP for new smart kitchen appliance

Midea's semiconductor heating device named "Magic Cube" is displayed on September 27, 2016 during the NXPFTF Shenzhen technology forum held in Shenzhen. [Photo by Liu Zheng from chinadaily.com.cn]

Cooking will become smarter thanks to a new technology implemented in semiconductor microwave heating devices.

Domestic consumer household appliance maker Midea Group Co recently unveiled in collaboration with Netherlands-based NXP Semiconductors a smart kitchen appliance that is powered by the latter's radio frequency (RF) cooking technology.

The smart gadget, which made its debut at this year's IFA, a trade show for consumer electronics and home appliance held in Berlin in September, is specifically developed as a 300 watt cooking device that is based on NXP's latest generation cooking component named MHT1004N.

The RF component is a low-voltage solid state cooking transistor which creates and delivers energy, enabling greater control over the heating process and allows the appliance to control energy in a closed loop manner for evenly heated food.

"Midea and NXP have been cooperating for years to research and develop solutions for the future smart kitchen," said Wu Dong, senior director of RF products at NXP Semiconductors Asia Pacific.

"We're excited to team up with NXP and transform the conventional methods of cooking to solid state," said Luan Chun, director of the appliances business unit innovation center at Midea. "Together, we've also jointly developed a standard system unit, which enables us to quickly implement new designs using a flexible, modular approach for future product developments."

Paul Hart, executive vice-president and general manager of NXP's RF unit, said in a keynote at the firm's latest tech forum that a joint laboratory specialized in collaboration to combine expertise on next generation designs using semiconductor microwave heating technologies was established by the two companies in 2012, aiming at build a partnership to transform conventional cooking methods to solid state and share visions to stand out in the smart kitchen appliance market.

Dubbed NXPFTF Shenzhen 2016, the forum organized by the company on Thursday showed off the latest tech breakthroughs and products that focused on China's Internet of Things market.

Statistics from Beijing-based iResearch Consulting Group show that, with a market share of 36.6 percent, the sales revenue of hardware products for smart home appliances in the country ranked top position among the entire smart hardware industry, similar to the combination of the sales of smart wearables and smart transportations.

According to another market consulting company Statista, China's smart home appliances market scale reached 40.34 billion yuan ($6.05 billion), up 41 percent year-on-year. The company predicts that in 2018, the market will witness a boom with the number reaching 130 billion yuan.