By Greg Gao

The Chinese home appliance giant Midea has mass-produced MCU chips since last year and continues lifting manufacturing capacity with a target to produce automotive chips by 2024, the company announced on its investor relations information platform recently.

Midea set up its chip design company MR Semicon(美仁半导体) in 2018. It focuses on MCU and power chips for home appliances, industry, automobile, and medical care with technical standards of safety, reliability, adaptability, and high-cost performance. It has now an MCU shipment of about 10 million. Its planned MCU products will first be applied to the control of water pumps for electric vehicles

On March 11, Midea Group announced it would spend RMB 2.5 billion ($393.4 million) to 5 billion($786.8 million) to repurchase its shares, which will be used to implement the company’s equity incentive plan. 

Midea is also vigorously expanding its data economy business. It has signed an agreement with Guiyang Municipal Government to establish a data center in Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province in Southwest China. Fang Hongbo, the chairman, and president of Midea Group said that the project would take advantage of Guizhou's comprehensive data industry to introduce a software R&D center in the future and boost its emerging businesses such as cloud service in the manufacturing industry.