Taiwan vendor Sampo said Wednesday it planned to sell its line of
Net-connected home appliances via OEMs in Europe.
The line, which the company recently started selling under the
Sampo brand in Taiwan, includes an air conditioner, air purifier,
dehumidifier, fan, fire detector, gas detector, outlet
controller,motion sensor, Internet refrigerator, and home server.
The company said that the Internet refrigerator has a touch screen
to enable e-mail and Web browsing and acts as a control panel for
the other devices. Users can communicate with their appliances
and home devices via the Web or Wireless Application Protocol
(WAP) phones.
Inside the home, the devices are connected using existing power
lines and a power line transceiver. The appliances use uses
Echelon’s LonWorks platform.
While the appliances are sold under the Sampo brand in Taiwan,
they will be OEM’d to vendors in Europe. Sampo did not say which vendors would sell the
smart appliances.
“The market for smart appliances is here now and we want to be the leading international
supplier of products for this market,” said Simon Lee, home appliance export director at
Sampo.