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Dec. 12 (NBD) -- Xiaomaigui, a high-tech retail store concept using so-called mini unmanned counters, backed by Midea and Alibaba, on Tuesday released new counters and cashier-less store solutions at a conference held jointly by Xiaomaigui and Intel (China) Co., Ltd.

One of the new unmanned counters, developed based on Intel's OpenVINO toolkit, can identify in real time the movement of a customer taking or putting back goods, hence determining which goods the customer takes away in the end.

Zhao Ping, director of the international trade research department under the Academy of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, said to NBD that suppliers of smart vending machines or counters like Xiaomaigui are bullish on the prospects of the unmanned retail sector.

The transaction size of China's unmanned retail market (including vending machines) approached 20 billion yuan (2.9 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017 and is estimated to surpass 65 billion yuan (9.4 billion U.S. dollars) in 2020, data from market analysis firm iResearch showed.

However, when compared with Japan where the transaction size of the unmanned retail market in 2016 reached somewhere between 280 billion yuan (40.5 billion U.S. dollars) and 300 billion yuan (43.4 billion U.S. dollars), China's automated retail market is still in its infancy.

Zhao attributed the success of vending machines in Japan to its small population and scarce land resources which result in high labor costs and housing rents.

Despite immaturity of unmanned retail development in China, the market is generally perched in optimism.

In order to promote the progress and maturity of China's unmanned retail industry, in Zhao's view, two aspects of problems should be addressed. First, the supply of commodities should be tailored to local needs, which requires efficient category management, to uplift purchase frequency. Second, costs of equipment, logistics and so on should be taken under control, which entails advance in scale and technology.

With regard to technology development status in the unmanned retail domain, Xiaomaigui's founder Dai Jiang noted that challenges in visual identity remain and FRID, or radio frequency identification devices, and AI technologies are still under rapid development. But Dai also acknowledged that all technological applications have a critical point to reach maturity, and once breakthroughs are made, such applications will enjoy faster development.

Dai revealed to NBD that Xiaomaigui in the future will seek for integration of online and offline businesses. Besides, the company will penetrate into areas with higher margin such as prepared food and pharmaceuticals, which is probably one of its options to withstand cost pressure.

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn