We didn’t see this one coming, but earlier this month, Midea and Hisense signed a strategic agreement to operate in a partnership in certain areas.
However, given the rise of what we coined as being “supermassive appliance groups” some time ago, it really shouldn’t come as a surprise in some regards that some of the “smaller companies” and these companies aren’t small, would start to at least cooperate with one another. It does make sense.
The two companies say that they will cooperate on areas they set out as being AI and digital transformation to investigate AI-powered agents in manufacturing, logistics, and general efficiency across the businesses. Ai, of course, had to get slipped into the conversation somewhere.
When they then talk of “Green & Smart Manufacturing​​: Focus”, the bit about looking into environmental stuff makes sense, but the vibe we get is that they are looking to work together with respect to the manufacture of goods. We’ll have to see hw that pans out.
And finally, logistics is mentioned with respect to optimising them for both companies with what sounds like shared supply chains and warehousing.
From our perspective, this looks like a bid to reduce costs and for both to share common resources and that makes total sense especially when you consider the other behemoths out there that both companies compete with.
Is it a precursor to a full-blown merger? Who can say, but given the level of integration on show here, we’d not be at all surprised if that’s where this story ended up going.
