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Recently, we saw a self-service freshly ground coffee machine equipped with the SIMCom LTE CAT4 module at the MWC site in the United States. The coffee machine was easy to operate and attracted a large crowd to the scene.
With the steady growth of the global coffee market, the new retail self-service freshly ground coffee machine has become a dark horse in the industry.
It is well-known that the coffee culture has developed into a world culture, and coffee has become a persified product that meets emotional and social needs from an original single beverage. Statistics show that the total world-wide coffee consumption in 2017/18 has reached 9.348 million tons, and the total market scale is around 12 trillion yuan. Take the convenience store with the highest market share in China as an example; it sold around 10 million cups of coffee in 2016, a year-on-year increase of 140%. It can be seen that the explosive sales have brought many opportunities and challenges to the coffee industry, as practitioners need to rapidly enhance their reputation and brand strength.
Source of data: Organized according to public information of the International Coffee Organization
From the perspective of a coffee drinking structure, the proportion of freshly ground coffee in the world is 87%, far exceeding that of instant coffee. As drinking coffee has become a habit, coupled with more and more time and place restrictions, it can quickly lead to consumers sharing retail services, and promote the emergence of unattended terminals; under the influence of this market, a batch of retail forms for obtaining freshly ground coffee through self-service payment has been generated. Aiming at the current situation that China’s freshly ground coffee market data is below the global average, on one hand, the self-help retail coffee service can optimize the cost structure of the original coffee shop, while on the other hand, it also satisfies different consumer needs. Therefore, self-service coffee has become a new sales channel that has been favored by capital, which may bring structural opportunities to the coffee market.
SIM7600CE series leads new retail terminals and actively penetrates the self-service coffee market
This shared coffee machine provided by SIMCom is a user interaction system, deployed on a multi-touch display to complete the function of mobile payment. After the user has clicked the on-screen menu, selected the corresponding coffee, and completed the scan code payment, the coffee machine begins making a cup of freshly ground and delicious coffee.
In addition, the coffee machine is specially equipped with a small refrigerator to further enhance the user’s drinking experience. This refrigerator keeps the milk at an optimal storage temperature to provide users with fresh milk, ensuring the best taste of cappuccino, latte and all other types of coffee.
The coffee machine used in the United States is equipped with SIM7600A-H (4G network) modules. It is understood that this kind of machine is laid in semi-open retail stores, shopping malls, office buildings, airports, subways, etc., and 4G modules are already at the heart of the coffee machine. Its communication technology has freed the freshly ground coffee from the constraints of the physical store, and actively expanded the effective radius of market users, allowing consumers to enjoy coffee anytime, anywhere.
It is reported that the SIM7600A-H used has been smoothly upgraded to the SIM7600CE for the Chinese market. The software version is the same, and the entire upgrade completion time is under 12 hours. The SIM7600A-H has been certified by operators such as AT&T and Verizon in the United States to support secondary development functions, and can flexibly research and develop software functions suitable for specific scenarios to meet the needs of enterprise products, and complete product launch and market in the shortest time.
At present, this type of coffee machine uses the SIMCom LTE CAT4 communication modules SIM7600CE and SIM7600A-H in China and the United States respectively, while also providing different models of LTE CAT4 series modules for different countries concurrently, such as SIM7600E-H (for Germany, South Korea, etc.). This series of modules supports LTE-FDD/LTE-TDD/TD-SCDMA/HSPA+/CDMA/GSM/EDGE and other network standards, and covers up to 15 network frequencies. With numerous network certification and operator certification qualifications for different countries and regions, it is suitable for almost all new retail terminals, unmanned vendors, shared devices and other M2M applications. In addition, the series of products also provides PCIE modules for the perse product design needs of the industry.
Furthermore, each LTE module also offers a variety of sub-model products, supporting persity reception, GNSS, voice, open linux, FOTA and other functions. It can interpret the optimal cost-effective solution for different scenarios, applications, functions, etc., and has obvious advantages in flexibility and stability.
Outlook - Conclusion
Similar to unattended retail terminals like self-service coffee, such as vending machines, self-service juicers, unmanned stores, unmanned shelves, etc., more unmanned & new retail terminals will be put on the market in the future to meet the growing demand for retail goods. With its insights into the global market for new retail and shared equipment, such as freshly ground coffee machines, vending machines and shared bicycles, SIMCom has accumulated its research and development advantages over the years. When facing the outbreak of the new retail market with its customers in the industry, it can customize communication products with unique functional requirements for customers, based on the industry demand characteristics of the leading product design.
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