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China’s Internet of Things Industry Exceeds 900B Yuan

2017-09-26

中国经贸聚焦·英文版 2017年9期

Chinas Internet of Things (IoT) industry has seen its output value exceed 900 billion yuan ($140 billion), with a compound annual growth rate of over 25 percent, a senior official said Sunday. With a huge market, a complete industrial chain and the worlds biggest mobile telecommunications network, China will soon take the lead in some frontier IoT sub-sectors, Vice-Minister of Industry and Information Technology Luo Wen said during an IoT expo in Wuxi, Jiangsu province.

IoT connects traditional devices, including home appliances, to the internet. A number of technological centers and laboratories will be established to support development in this field, while the manufacturers will be overhauled to be more reliant on the IoT, Luo said. Jack Ma, Alibaba Groups founder and chairman, has predicted that manufacturing will become flexible in the future and with expert programmers working in factory workshops instead of in internet companies. Luo said the IoT will be expanded in agriculture, logistics, energy, environmental protection, medical care and other areas. Cooperation between domestic and overseas IoT research institutions and companies will increase, and actively engage in establishing international standards, said Wang Zhigang, vice minister of science and technology.

Chinese telecom carriers are rushing to roll out “internet of things” technology for consumers in a wide range of areas from smart homes to smart parking. High-tech solutions run by NBIoT chips can connect smartphones and mobile devices to an array of household products, as well as other key day-today items. The leading three telecom companies have pioneered this technology with manufacturing companies as the internet of things starts to take shape. “The appearance of NB-IoT has opened up a new era,” said Zhang Shunmao, president of the Marketing& Solution Department for Products and Solutions at Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, a leading smartphone manufacturer.

Indeed, NB-IoTs narrow band radio technology was developed to enable a wide range of low-power devices and products to be connected to the internet. Simply put, this means you can read how much electricity or gas you have used at home on your smartphones or PCs from your offices, or even turn off your cookers. During the past three years, telecom companies have raced to wheel out the service. China Telecommunications Corp started the ball rolling when it became the first carrier to map out NB-IoT technology. Earlier this year, it established its internet of things network in cooperation with companies such as Hisense Co Ltd and Haier Group Corp, two of Chinas largest home appliance companies. Competition in this new “home sector” is highly competitive.endprint

China United Network Communications Group Co Ltd set up more than 50 million NB-IoT connections in more than 10 major cities, including Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Rival China Mobile Communications Corp and NTT DOCOMO, a Japanese telecom company, then announced they would jointly develop the worlds first multi-vendor embedded subscriber identity module (eSIM) system. This will mean that certain products manufacturered in Japan will connect up to China Mobiles internet of things network once they are exported here. Closer to home, China Telecom linked up with bike-sharing startup Ofo Inc and Huawei Technologies Co to produce smart locks based on NBIoT technology. But then, the potential for the internet of things is huge worldwide. “The number of internet of things devices will reach 26 billion globally by 2020, which will bring sales revenue of $300 billion,” stated Gartner Inc, the global research and advisory company based in the United States. As for China, the overall market is now worth 750 billion yuan ($110.6 billion) and is expected to exceed 1.5 trillion yuan by 2018. “The internet of every- thing will promote the transformation of lighting, water services and manufacturing,” Zhang at Huawei said.

China Mobile Communications Corp, the worlds largest telecom carrier by subscribers, said mobile internet of things (IoT) connections will surpass 1.75 billion by 2020, as the telecom heavyweight accelerates its commercialization of IoT services across the country this year. China Mobile on Thursday announced it would establish an IoT alliance in cooperation with nine part-ners, including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Huawei Technologies Co, Qualcomm Inc and Haier Group, in a move to establish an open and sharing IoT industry ecosystem.”We will further expand IoT connections and estimate that smart connections will increase by 100 million to 200 million this year,” Sha Yuejia, vice-president of China Mobile, said at the 2017 Mobile World Congress in Shanghai. Sha said the companys mobile IoT connections surpassed 120 million by the end of May, with wide application in internet of vehicles, smart bicycles, finance and wearable devices.

China Mobile has become the worlds largest IoT connection service provider, with IoT base stations reaching more than 1.62 million, Sha said, adding they will promote NB-IoT and eMTC technologies this year, as well as accelerate layout in IoT chipsets, mod- ules and terminal devices.endprint

It has stepped up efforts to promote the application of NB-IoT in these areas, such as intelligent meter reading, intelligent building, intelligent wearable devices, transportation and logistics. In May, the company launched an NB-IoT pre-commercial service in Yingtan, Jiangxi province. It is leading the establishment of domestic standards related to NB-IoT.

The NB-IoT is a narrow band radio technology designed for IoT, allowing connections between IoT devices that is faster and on a wider range. It has the advantage of low cost, wide coverage, less energy consumption and long battery life, compared with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. In May, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the speeding up of the commercial use of NB-IoT in China. The ministry said it was encouraging companies to promote technical reform of broadband network infrastructure to facilitate its commercial use. The ministry said the technology could be applied to the industrial internet and urban public services. Other domestic telecoms operators have stepped up their efforts to boost the application of the NBIoT. China Telecom Corp carried out outdoor NB-IoT tests in 12 cities in the first quarter. According to market consultancy IDC, there will be a projected 30 billion connected “things” and a revenue opportunity of $1.7 trillion for the IoT worldwide.

Fu Liang, an independent telecom expert, said NB-IoT will become an important business growth point for telecom carriers in the future, which also shows huge potential and application prospects, adding telecom carriers have invested large amounts of resources in the sector. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced its decision to speed up the commercial use of NarrowBand internet of things (NBIoT) in China on Monday, ShangHai Securities News reported. NB-IoT, a narrowband radio technology designed for the internet of things (IoT), has been developed to enable a wide range of low-power devices and services to be connected using cellular telecommunications bands on the Wide Area Network (WAN). Compared to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technology, NB-IoT, having the advantages of low cost, wide coverage, long battery life and enabling a large amount of connected devices, is believed to have great potential in application.

To meet the demands of the application of cellular IoT, the ministry proposed to encourage enterprises to promote the technical transformation of broadband network infrastructure such as fiber broadband and Long Term Evolution (LTE) enhancement, expand the deployment of cellular IoT and accelerate the commercial use of NB-IoT, the report said. In addition, NB-IoTs commercial use in industrial internet and urban public service and management and its supports for smart factory and internet of vehicles are specifically indicated by the ministry. Domestic telecom operators have expanded the deployment of network infrastructure under the guidance of the authority, ac-cording to the report.endprint

The worlds largest NB-IoT will be completed by China Telecom, at the end of June, to achieve the full web commercial use of the end-to-end NB-IoT. China Mobile, having started outfield test on NB-IoT in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Fuzhou, is set to a large-scale outfield test validation later and commercialize NB-IoT by 2018. The report said a number of listed companies have been rolling out the application of NB-IoT. Viewshine Ltd, a domestic smart metering solution provider, said in April its NB-IoT smart metering had entered the trial stage.

Hangzhou Innover Technology Co Ltd announced in January that the companys first NB-IoT smart gas meter had started trial operation in the urban area of Shanghai. The NB-IoT technology enables the gas meter to upload gas data and real time abnormal running state to backend. Promoted by the government and boosted by the industry, NB-IoT businesss explosive growth is expected to first happen in China, a researcher of China Unicom Labs told Shanghai Se- curities News. “IoT will be used in the fields of public utilities and smart city and industries including smart metering, smart parking and intelligent security.”Li Zhenya, an analyst of Zhongtai Securities, said the launch of NB-IoT sets a unified protocol standard for the transport layer and the involvement of operators increases the speed and scale of IoT, which can provide a better material basis for the development of the application layer in downstream. The full explosion of IoT industrial chain is at the corner, Li said.endprint