China's Technologies and Applications of Internet of Things Enter an Active Period of Innovation

NANJING, China, Sept. 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On September 10, the 4-day 2017 World Internet of Things Exposition (WIOT) kicked off in Wuxi, China. Elites from more than 20 countries and regions across the globe and representatives of over 500 enterprises and organizations gathered at the shore of Tai Lake to discuss the industry development, and seize the opportunity in the tide of Internet of Things.

As indicated by the latest data provided by Wuxi Branch of China Mobile Communications Corporation Jiangsu Company Limited, by the end of this August, the quantity of Internet of Things (IoT) Cards issued by China Mobile in Wuxi had exceeded the quantity of its cellphone communication users; compared with the figures in the same period last year, it had increased by over 5 million cards.

Wuxi is only a miniature of the rapid IoT development in China. China proposed "Sensing China" for the first time in 2009. It was in that year that China's State Council approved to build a national-level innovative demonstration area of sensor networks in Wuxi, signaling the start of China's IoT. So far, Wuxi has become a hot spot for China's IoT industry development, and the business revenues from core IoT industries jumped to over 200 billion RMB in 2016, creating more than 150,000 jobs.

According to the latest China Annual IoT Development Report 2016-2017 issued by China Economic Information Service and Xinhua Wuxi IoT Consulting Center, although China currently ranks the 23rd in the Global Connectivity Index, still an adopter, it is expected that, by 2020, there will be 1 billion M2M (machine-to-machine) connections in China and the scale of IoT industry will exceed 1.5 trillion RMB.

NarrowBand IoT (NB-IoT) is a low-speed network, featured by low energy consumption, extensive coverage and strong penetrability. At present, China's three major telecom operators are accelerating their construction of low-speed NB-IoT, and high-speed 5G networks are arriving soon. The unified communication network standards and multi-layer coverage have overcome the previous difficulty of fragmented IoT applications. Besides, prices of some sensors and chips drop and the consumption demands for wearable devices, home security and smart home emerges, paving the way for IoT technologies and applications to enter an active period of innovation. As remarked by Wu Hequan, an academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, the pattern of China's IoT development is now shifting from government-dominated to market-driven. 

From promoting the electronic "ID card" of cars to eliminate cars with fake license plates, to issuing smart sphygmomanometers and blood-sugar tester to enable family doctors to know the real-time state of chronic disease sufferers and to mounting sensors to fans to "sense" the operating conditions of fans far away, from life scenes like medicare and transport to production scenes like environmental protection and manufacture, application innovation in China's IoT can be "sensed" everywhere.

"It is a general trend for traditional industries to go smart, while IoT is a necessary means to achieve it", said Ni Guangnan - an academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Professionals believe that, as China has huge market demands, driven by national industry policies, and it learns while applying technologies, like in high-speed railways, and promotes development through applications to make breakthroughs in fundamental core technologies, it is absolutely possible for China to take the lead in some IoT fields.