{"id":23245,"date":"2019-04-25T14:41:56","date_gmt":"2019-04-25T13:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gsma.com\/solutions-and-impact\/technologies\/internet-of-things\/?post_type=news&p=23245"},"modified":"2025-11-04T11:27:47","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T11:27:47","slug":"apac-iot-partnership-taipei-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gsma.com\/solutions-and-impact\/technologies\/internet-of-things\/news\/apac-iot-partnership-taipei-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"A Rapidly Growing Ecosystem Meets: the APAC IoT Partnership Programme comes to Taipei"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s now widely recognised in the mobile industry that Asia Pacific (APAC) is the world\u2019s foremost growth region in IoT, representing 40% of the total global spend last year.\u00a0 37 of the world\u2019s 110 Mobile IoT networks are deployed in Asia Pacific across 12 countries, and there remains plenty of room for growth and ROI \u2013 the GSMA published a report<\/a> at this year\u2019s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona setting out how APAC is putting Mobile IoT to highly innovative uses.\u00a0 That flourishing of connections and smart services \u2013 and all the improvements to quality of life they bring with them \u2013 won\u2019t just continue to unfold unaided, however; and recent signs of slowing<\/a> subscriber growth in Asia only further underscores the need for industry collaboration on IoT across APAC, to ensure continued adoption at scale.<\/p>\n

To that end, the APAC IoT Partnership Programme was launched in October 2018, to bring together operators and their partners in the wider ecosystem for the sharing of ideas, progress updates and common challenges.\u00a0 By convening key players in this way we work to accelerate adoption of IoT across APAC, as well as promoting regional thought leadership. Participants can gain access to open labs to test innovative new use cases, and unparalleled networking opportunities through what is already the largest IoT community in the region. By the time of our engagement events in Hong Kong and Shenzhen in December last year \u2013 which focused on NB-IoT deployments, AI and engaging with device companies \u2013 over 500 partners had joined, including developers, manufacturers, system integrators and vertical solution providers.<\/p>\n

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\nThe latest event on the Programme\u2019s tour took us to Taipei last month, where 28 industry experts from 14 different mobile network operators met at the Smart City Summit Expo to consider progress and discuss the road ahead. As of March 2019 24 operators across 13 countries were members of the APAC IoT Partnership Programme, with two new members welcomed at last month\u2019s event: Sri Lankan operator Mobitel<\/a>, and Jazz from Pakistan.\u00a0 16 IoT ecosystem partners were invited to showcase their solutions to the assembled regional operators in a pitching and matching session: these included innovations in smart agriculture, smart homes, smart cities, and a variety of other in logistics, edge computing and augmented reality. Real deployment learnings were available through inspection of innovations such as an integrated smart transport hub, and an MEC-based augmented reality-navigation shopping mall. There were over 100 companies present at the broader exhibition, providing rich insight into the shape of the region\u2019s IoT market.<\/p>\n

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\nThe feedback from Programme members was highly encouraging \u2013 in fact our member survey revealed 100% of participating operators felt their organisational objectives in attending had been met. Chamith Hettiarachchi, Head of Business Solutions, Mobitel reflected that it was \u201cvaluable to learn from and connect with IoT and smart city service providers based in Taiwan\u2026 they shared a lot of real use case, deployment information models, statuses an challenges.\u201d\u00a0 We also received constructive suggestions in terms of the forward view \u2013 recognising the potential for events of this kind to catalyse development across this increasingly complex ecosystem, Hendra Sumiarsa, Head Of IoT & Smart City Business Development, Indosat urged the GSMA \u201cto arrange and help explore more in mission critical communication, smart lighting, smart building, 5G IoT, AI, blockchain in specific vertical segments including healthcare, logistics, transport, manufacturing and automotive.\u201d<\/p>\n