Internet of Things in China set for huge growth on eve of IoT Summit

China is widely regarded as being a world leader in the development and deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, and over the last few weeks, a number of reports support long-held forecasts that the Chinese IoT market is expected to grow massively in the coming years.
Last week, market research company Technavia issued a report on the Chinese IoT market highlighting that the country’s IoT market is expected to grow at a CAGR of close to 19% during the forecast period 2016-2020 and exceed a revenue of $248 billion by 2020.
The research also underscored the transformative effect of the IoT in a number of sectors including manufacturing, automotive and health. Wearable devices were cited as having a definitive impact on the improvement of manufacturing, while normalisation of connectivity in the auto sector are predicted to enable advances in asset tracking, fleet management and fan growth of domestic car manufacturers. Improvements in communication and the mass introduction of remote monitoring were reported as two key reasons why the sector was expected to grow from $16.54 billion in 2015 to $42.5 billion by 2020.
Across all these sectors, operators will play a key role in helping to deliver a new generation of connected solutions. Operators are already central to the IoT in China and according to GSMA Intelligence, they service 102 million cellular Machine-to-Machine (M2M) connections in China, a figure expected to rise to 336 million at the end of 2020.
However operators’ value extends beyond simply providing connections. Mobile World Live recently reported that operator China Unicom is planning large-scale NB-IoT field trials in more than five cities this year.
Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) is a standards-based Low Power Wide Area technology developed to enable a wide range of new IoT devices and services. According to Tian Wenke, GM of China Unicom’s customer department, the operator aims to start commercial deployment by the end of the year and take coverage nationwide in 2018.
Pioneering steps such as these are indicative of just how quickly the Chinese IoT industry is progressing. Speaking with Computer.co.uk, Ian Ferguson, vice president of worldwide marketing and strategic alliances for chip designer, ARM, discussed how important China was in shaping the future of the IoT, so much so that the company is investing heavily in the Chinese IoT market.
On 30 June, the GSMA will be hosting the IoT Summit at Mobile World Congress Shanghai. At this event, attendees will be able to find out the latest market opportunities in the Asian IoT market and discover the key enablers that will realise growth. To find out more and register for this event, please click here.