At the ODC19 conference held today in Beijing, Oppo's vice president and smartphone manager, Liu Bo, announced that the Chinese company will launch a new Internet of things (IoT) protocol called HeyThings IoT, a dedicated platform and an interconnection protocol. audio.
Oppo HeyThings IoT and Oppo Watch arriving in 2020
Liu Bo then anticipated that in the first quarter of 2020 Oppo will also release a smartwatch: the Oppo Watch, together with a new fitness platform. So Oppo plans to go beyond the "simple" smartphone business and start a series of products for health, wellness and sport. All obviously interconnected thanks to the IoT platform. In addition, the company will focus on four main categories: personal, family, travel and office products.
Going back to Oppo's HeyThings IoT protocol, this will be compatible with other already existing protocols, adding local (with other HeyThings products) and multi-brand (with products from other brands) connectivity. Oppo will make it all open source, releasing the various documents, SDKs and modules to start immediately developing the necessary software.
The HeyThings platform will come later instead. This move will include product development itself, software customization and attached cloud service.
As for the audio interconnection protocol mentioned above. Liu Bo says the technology will allow third-party smart headphones to connect with Oppo smartphones. The first devices with this technology will arrive in June 2020 and will include features such as quick pairing (fast connection) and power display (to show the charge left).
Finally, Oppo founder Chen Mingyong told the conference that OPPO is not just a smartphone maker. And that in the following years the company will invest 50 billion Yuan (more than 6 billion euro) in research and development, especially in the sectors 5G, artificial intelligence, AR, cloud and other innovative technologies.
