By Mao Xinhui
A florist on University Road is thriving thanks to a blend of online and offline orders, grateful for a "Sunmi cashier system" that simplifies electronic invoicing and membership management.
The cash register, eye-catching and modern, is part of a comprehensive smart retail solution suite, automating everything from takeout orders to cash settlements, boosting efficiency and reducing the need for manpower. This innovation propels even small and inconspicuous businesses into the digital marketing age.
Shanghai Sunmi Technology Group Co., Ltd. ("Sunmi") is recognized as one of the first 40 innovative corporate headquarters in Shanghai, creating a vast commercial Internet of Things through altruism and empowerment.
In 2020, Sunmi unveiled its digital retail experience space, the Sunmi House flagship store, in Wujiaochang's Hopson One. Many visiting customers were local merchants, with some having previously purchased Sunmi products online. For instance, a chain hotpot restaurant utilizes Sunmi's intelligent queuing machine, enhancing efficiency and customer service even in staff absence.
At the National Retail Federation's convention in New York this January, Sunmi introduced new products featuring advanced biometric and Hyper Wi-Fi technologies, capturing global attention.
In China, applications of facial recognition and other biometric technologies have become commonplace. However, due to cultural and legal differences, such biometric recognition has not seen widespread adoption internationally, leaving many users and consumers without the benefits of AI-based conveniences. Sunmi's newly introduced comprehensive biometric technology integrates multiple biometric characteristics like face, fingerprint, and palm patterns to provide convenient and highly accurate individual identification. This technology adapts well across various cultures and consumer habits worldwide, pushing the envelope in payment technology advancement.
Moreover, Sunmi's Hyper Wi-Fi technology, built upon the latest Wi-Fi protocols with extensive proprietary innovations, extends communication distances more than tenfold over traditional Wi-Fi, circumventing the frequency interference issues prevalent in current mainstream Wi-Fi bands. This development effectively lays a solid technical foundation for future commercial IoT communications.
These efforts are underpinned by Sunmi's continuous investment in innovative technologies in recent years. With the global IoT growing more rapidly, although Windows-based terminal devices will maintain a significant market share for some time, Sunmi has recognized an increasing demand from merchants for transitioning from Windows to Android applications. To hasten the digitalization of global commerce and ensure usage scenarios and merchant experiences are unaffected by underlying system limitations, Sunmi has closely collaborated with Qualcomm to launch innovative SUPER POS product solutions. "We aim to allow merchants using Windows systems to also benefit from the 'low power, high performance, sleek and stylish' SUPER POS, actively supporting the digital transformation across the industry," says Lin Zhe, Sunmi's founder and CEO.
As technologies like blockchain and big data mature, the interconnected commercial world of the Internet of Everything is poised for greater expansion. Sunmi will continue its exploration, providing rich, platform-based, and modular technical support to global ecosystem partners. This effort aims to empower the digital transformation of more offline application scenarios, establish data standards, and build connectivity systems, further deepening its commitment to a continuously evolving route of technological innovation.