Nov 15, 2019| JD Technology

Everything You Need to Know About JD.com’s Pinnacle Tech Event of the Year

Yuchuan Wang tech

We are kicking off JD Discovery (JDD), our pinnacle tech event of the year. With over 4,500 attendees, JDD gathers industry experts from all areas of technology to discuss the most pertinent issues and developments in the industry today. This year’s event is focused on technology-driven opening and empowerment.

Our commitment to technology and the role that it plays in our business is clear. Just take a look at the numbers: Today, JD already has 18,000 R&D employees, many of whom hold master’s degrees or above. In 2018 alone, we applied for over 3,400 patents covering technology solutions in a wide range of industries.

In JD’s 10 years of development, from retail to logistics to digital technology, we have witnessed the gradual transformation of the retail industry driven by technology. We have also seen technology’s important role in promoting the transformation of other industries.

In the past year, JD has continued to enhance its core technology capabilities in order to support existing retail, logistics, digital technology and other businesses, as well as to be able to support future external demand, covering international business projects, commercial projects, and enterprise systems transformation.

As we look ahead, we have our eyes on being the technology backbone of the industrial internet, helping businesses of all sizes in all industries to address their pain points, and providing real, tangible value to society.

ANNOUNCED AT JDD

JD Launches New Industrial IoT Solution for the Energy Sector

JD.com is pushing into the energy sector with a new industrial Internet of Things (IoT) solution. Integrating JD’s industrial IoT platform with the energy sector’s devices and meters, JD is helping the energy sector to modernize and increase efficiency, satisfying consumers’ daily energy needs, while helping businesses on their low-carbon transformation journey. JD has partnered with State Grid, China’s national power company, to implement its IoT platform solution in China, starting with Heilongjiang, Liaoning, and Inner Mongolia in Northeast China.

JD’s IoT Smart Housing Solution Brings the Future of Living to Hundreds of Residential Compounds Across China

With the help of JD.com’s Internet of Things (IoT) platform, more and more families across China are benefitting from a smart home lifestyle. What makes JD’s smart home initiative unique is that it is focused not only on the individual house level, but at the residential compound level. JD IoT has already signed partnerships with more than 20 leaders in the real estate industry across 30 cities in China to provide IoT solutions for smart home and smart property management. Some of the features available include, facial recognition for building access, temporary QR code access for visitors, smart parking payment, management via app and more.

RECENT TECH-RELATED NEWS:

JD.com Helps Farms Go Digital to Bring Safer, Healthier Food to Chinese Customers – JD is using technology to help the traditional farming industry bring delicious food to your table faster than ever.

JD.com’s AI Targets Your Kitchen – Through its signature Customer-to-Manfucturer (C2M) initative, JD is using AI to figure out how to tailor products to meet demand, and working with brand partners to bring them to market. Our recent case study with paper products company Vinda is a great example of this.

Trash Sorting: it’s a Piece of Cake with JD AI The application of new technology greatly simplifies process for China-based consumers and businesses – Earlier in the year, China issued new trash regulations. JD is using AI to help customers navigate the new regulations with ease, bringing consumers peace of mind, and helping protect the environment.

JD.com Self-developed Blockchain Framework Now Open to Businesses – JD began using blockchain in its operations to enable consumers to trace the origin of products they purchase, giving them an additional authenticity guarnatee. The company has opened up its JD Chain blockchain framework to other businesses, enabling companies in industries who don’t have their own blockchain capabilities to benefit from this technology.

JD.com and Rakuten to collaborate on unmanned delivery solutions in Japan – Back in 2015 JD began developing its drone delivery program to solve last mile delivery challenges in rural areas, where terrain is particularly challenging for traditional delivery logistics, and later began developing its autonomous delivery vehicles to solve challenges in urban last mile delivery. As part of its broader strategy to open up its technology to partners, JD partnered with Rakuten to collaborate on unmanned delivery solutions in Japan.

Click to for more tech-related news

Nov 26, 2019| JD Retail

JD.com’s StarLink IoT Platform is the Future of Retail

Yuchuan Wang JD.com’s StarLink IoT Platform is the Future of Retail | JD’s StarLink IoT platform improves user experience | tech

This Singles’ Day, JD.com launched the world’s largest home appliance experience center –– JD E-SPACE –– in the city of Chongqing in western China. JD E-SPACE is the world’s first retail space to be completely covered by 5G, and has already been a resounding success. More than 10 million RMB worth of merchandise was sold in the first hour after opening.

This one-of-a-kind store is powered by JD’s StarLink IoT retail platform, a digital offline store middle platform that promises consumers a truly seamless interactive retail experience.

Already in use in over 10,000 offline stores across China, JD StarLink integrates over 1,000 different technologies and applications. It uses IoT, intelligent perception and identification technologies and more. The solution leverages JD.com’s partnership with Intel’s Open Retail Initiative, and the use of open-source EdgeX IoT middleware and Intel’s edge computing technologies. This allows for instant communication between instore smart devices, allowing for a seamless shopping experience for consumers, while streamlining data management for retailers. JD StarLink now provides comprehensive analysis for smart store management, operations and marketing. It covers traffic analysis, customer profile, new customer attraction, membership marketing, and more.

The JD StarLink platform enhances every aspect of the traditional brick and mortar store model, effortlessly melding online and offline commerce. For example, JD Smart Store Cam uses facial recognition to register shoppers’ basic attributes such as age, in order to recommend items and offer coupons, and the JD Cloud Shelf and the Interactive Shelf help shoppers to get more information about products, redeem discounts, and even visualize what a product might look like in their home. Consumers can even “try on” clothes with AR Fitting Room and pay for their purchases via facial recognition. The JD E-SPACE store in Chongqing boasts the largest number of digital price tags in the world, which adjust in real-time to reflect price changes and changes in inventory, while offering opportunities for consumers to receive discounts on products.

“JD’s StarLink IoT platform improves user experience and extends the length of time spent in store by providing valuable tools to analyze user attributes, transaction volumes and conversion rates and more,” said Miao Luo, Head of JD StarLink IoT Platform. “JD StarLink will continue to push the bounds of what is possible for dynamic consumer interaction, helping usher in an exciting new era in offline retail.”

Sep 2, 2019| JD Technology

JD and Philips Bring Unprecedented Precision to Retail with AI

Yuchuan Wang ai | tech

JD and leading health technology company Philips are using AI to maximize the performance of the brand’s flagship store by better understanding its consumers and their behavior. The partnership leverages JD’s unique AI-driven retail solution, which can provide a comprehensive analysis of a brand’s performance and help develop a smart marketing solution that covers product strategy, market analysis, marketing management and more. The partnership was announced at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference held in Shanghai from August 29-31.

The addition of AI to the puzzle allows brands like Philips to make sense of not only “structured data”, which is comprised of clearly defined data types whose pattern makes them easily searchable, but also “unstructured data”, which is comprised of data that is usually not as easily searchable, including formats like audio, video and social media, such as customer reviews, customer service feedback, product pages, advertisement videos and more. This is possible thanks to computer vision and natural language technology. At the same time, machine learning technology enables easy grouping of users and forecasting of consumer behavior.

For example, leveraging computer vision technology would enable a brand to understand fine-grain nuances, such as the fact that some consumers are more attracted to product images or marketing with a more professional background, while others gravitate more towards cartoons. At the same time, leveraging natural language processing can help understand the user’s pre- and post-shopping behavior, i.e. what impact the consultation they received in the process had on their ultimate decision to purchase. Understanding these nuances can reveal tons of new consumer insights that can be used to improve user experience, personalize marketing solutions and even design products.

In the collaboration with Philips, JD will leverage its AI technology to provide a comprehensive suite of solutions, including user portrait analysis, user behavior analysis and user motivation analysis. JD will assist in business decision making, providing guidance on product design, marketing and advertising, user engagement, branding and store operation, among other areas.

“Successful retail is about connecting with your customers, and giving them whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want it,” said Bowen Zhou, Vice President of JD.com and President of JD AI. “With AI technology, JD is helping our partners move from marketing to many, to marketing to one, in an efficient and cost-effective way.”

“For over a century, Philips has been embedding the “Innovation for You” philosophy” into our products, solutions and partnerships. ” said Jyh-Ching Yaur, CTO of Philips Greater China, “Leveraging JD’s AI competence in this innovative initiative, we will undoubtedly provide better products and services to our customers, especially in the retail space.”

This initiative is a natural extension of JD’s leadership in AI across speech and acoustics, computer vision, machine learning, knowledge graphs and semantics and dialogues. Earlier this year, in April, JD AI ranked first in the “WikiHop” reading comprehension contest, surpassing human performance for the first time. JD AI is focused not only on using AI to improve customer experience and efficiency at JD, but also on opening up this technology to partners in a wide range of industries.

Lower-Tier Cities, Quality and Omnichannel Innovation Drive Record-breaking Singles Day for JD.com