Porsche Designed a Sleek Machine for China’s Rich. It’s No Car – Bloomberg
What happened: Tetsuro Homma, the head of Panasonic’s appliance department spoke to Bloomberg about the company’s for-China-only high-tech washing machine. The Japanese electronics giant hired Germany’s luxury automaker Porsche to design the machine, called Alpha. “Their appetite for consumption is phenomenal,’’ said the executive referring to Chinese consumers. “We can’t make enough of these washing machines.” Alpha comes with a price tag of $2,900, according to Bloomberg. “No one accepts new technologies like the Chinese,” Homma told Bloomberg. “Their smartphone use puts Silicon Valley to shame.”
Why it’s important: The era of the Internet of Things has laid a solid foundation for the smart home market in China. The market huge and is expected to register a double-digit CAGR during the period of 2018 to 2024. In order to capture a larger share in the increasingly competitive market, traditional home appliance manufacturers including Haier Xiaomi are pressing ahead with internet-connected smart home products by integrating IoT and AI technologies to transform and innovate their products. Chinese consumers are leading in the early adoption of hi-tech home products and China is becoming a new testing ground for foreign home appliance manufacturers to test their products.