Exclusive | Shanghai’s old laneways get facial recognition, smart fire alarms in tie-up with iPhone maker Foxconn

A dowdy Shanghai residential neighbourhood is getting a hi-tech makeover by the manufacturer of the iPhone, and many more might follow under a cooperation pact between Foxconn and the city government.

Under the plan, Foxconn will equip 1990s-era buildings in the Yangpu district with the latest smoke-detection systems to improve fire safety, and facial-recognition software that can identify and flag potential intruders using data from a central control room, according to Wu Renjie, the executive director of Foxconn’s cloud and network business unit.

“We will embed fire alarms, smoke detectors and temperature sensors as well as facial-recognition cameras, connected within a system, to capture and show all the data on the big screen installed in the central control room,” Wu said in an interview with the South China Morning Post in Shenzhen.

The company is in talks with the Shanghai government about extending the pilot project, he said, declining to discuss financial arrangements. Foxconn will derive revenue from the management of the system, rather than just the installation of the hardware, he said.

Urban planners and city authorities worldwide have been applying information technology to municipal problems for years – from rubbish bins that can notify waste trucks when it is time to collect to automatic street lighting. For Foxconn, the push into the business of connecting the physical and digital worlds, called the internet of things, marks an attempt to diversify beyond hardware manufacturing.

The world’s biggest contract maker of electronics, Hon Hai Precision Industry – or Foxconn – gets more than half of its sales from Apple. Its shares have risen by 25 per cent this year in Taipei trading.