According to news on September 17, the “2017-2018 China Internet of Things Development Annual Report” was released. The report shows that the number of global Internet of Things devices grew strongly in 2017, reaching 8.4 billion units, exceeding the number of people for the first time. The global IoT market is expected to achieve large-scale penetration within ten years, and the market size may grow to US$3.9-11.1 trillion by 2025.
In my country, the Internet of Things market gradually returned to rationality in 2017 and entered a stage of substantial development. The annual market size exceeded 1 trillion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of more than 25%. At the same time, the Internet of Things of the three major operators entered the stage of large-scale commercialization in 2018: China Telecom even proposed to “inject intelligence” into the upgrade of the Internet of Things industry capabilities. China Mobile has achieved 384 million users and an astonishing growth rate of 154%. China Unicom NB-IoT/eMTC and LoRa are not left behind.
China Telecom: “Injecting intelligence” into upgrading the capabilities of the Internet of Things industry
At the 2018 World Internet of Things Expo Wuxi Summit, China Telecom Chairman Yang Jie proposed: With the acceleration of the “intelligent connection of everything”, “injecting intelligence” into the upgrading of the Internet of Things industry capabilities will be the most important next step for China Telecom .
According to reports, “Intention to Intelligence” will be fully developed for the overall capabilities of the five major links of “end, pipe, cloud, and service” of the Internet of Things:
Terminal intelligence focuses on promoting the ability to embed intelligent seamless access and industry terminal customization and adaptation in IoT chips; network intelligence focuses on comprehensively promoting CTNet2025 network reconstruction and introducing intelligent network technologies such as SDN and NFV; leading scale Deploy 5G to accelerate the evolution to the next generation network; pay attention to the platform and focus on implementing the “five major upgrades of the IoT open platform capabilities”, including: IoT and cloud integration capabilities, user development capabilities, application deployment capabilities, large-scale concurrency capabilities, security protection capabilities; application Focus on intelligence, focus on strengthening the capability output of the open platform to application partners, aggregation of partner application products, provide an open on-demand industry intelligent solution library and a complete application development system for cooperation and sharing; focus on services, fully integrate China The overall service capabilities of DICT inside and outside the telecommunications group provide cross-industry intelligent data services and integrated operation services for the Internet of Things industry and customers.
According to Yang Jie, China Telecom has built the world’s largest NB-IoT network, with more than 400,000 NB-IoT base stations, achieving full coverage in urban and rural areas, and the number of IoT users exceeds 80 million.
At present, China Telecom’s connection management module handles more than 90 million connections and makes over 5 billion API calls every month; the application enabling module provides a high-quality development environment for terminals and application development manufacturers, comprehensively reducing development costs by 20% and shortening development cycles by 50%. above.
In 2016, China Telecom joined 13 units to launch the Tianyi Internet Industry Alliance. At present, the alliance members cover all aspects of the industry, with a total number of more than 350, gathering more than 300 partners, and gathering more than 500 solutions.
At the “Tianyi Intelligent Ecological Expo” held last week, China Telecom also released the “New Generation Internet of Things Open Platform.” The new generation of IoT open platform has been upgraded in five aspects: first, the “thing-cloud integration” upgrade, which allows users to order cloud resources on the platform in just a few minutes; second, the user development upgrade, which allows users to master platform development within one day method; the third is application deployment upgrade, users can realize from terminal docking to application deployment within a week; the fourth is scale concurrent upgrade, the platform can support billion-level connections and millions of terminals concurrently; the fifth is security protection upgrade, users can obtain national secret-level systems Safety and security. The “new generation IoT open platform” will provide users with more convenient, more reliable, and safer all-round services.
At the same time, China Telecom released the “China Telecom NB-IoT Terminal Development Reference White Paper” as a technical reference for partners’ NB-IoT terminal development.
In addition, in terms of tariffs, China Telecom released the NB-IoT business package on June 20, 2018. This tariff package is billed according to the “number of connections”. A certain number of connections is specified in the package. The number of connections exceeding the number of connections outside the package will be charged separately. TOLL.
China Mobile: 384 million users, an astonishing growth rate of 154%
In the performance report for the first half of 2018, China Mobile’s IoT smart connections grew at an astonishing 154% year-on-year, with a net increase of 155 million in half a year to 384 million. The target revenue in 2018 is 7 billion yuan, with an annual growth rate of 300%.
Driven by China Mobile’s big connection strategy, China Mobile IoT focuses on five major product lines: intelligent connection, chip modules, open platforms, intelligent hardware, and industry applications, forming the “cloud-pipe-device” service capabilities of the Internet of Things. At present, the five core business segments have achieved good results:
In terms of smart connections, as of the first half of this year, the number of China Mobile’s IoT smart connections has increased by a net of 155 million, reaching a scale of 384 million. In particular, the number of IoT cards has exceeded 300 million so far, and the number is growing at a rate of 1 million per day.
In terms of chip modules, in 2017, the sales volume of self-owned brand modules was 2.74 million pieces, and the goal in 2018 is to exceed 10 million pieces.
In terms of open platforms, the independently developed industry mainstream open platform OneNET has more than 77,000 registered users, more than 8,500 corporate customers, and more than 50 million access devices. The goal in 2018 is to exceed 70 million units.
At the “2018 World Internet of Things Expo”, China Mobile’s IoT OneLink platform announced that through technical improvements to the original CCMP platform, OneLink has achieved five major capabilities: business operations, application integration, NB-IoT special access, international business expansion, and security protection. Breakthrough, successfully transformed into a diversified and comprehensive IoT platform with IoT card connection management services, API capability open services, big data analysis capability services, and IoT card operation management services.
In terms of smart hardware, terminal sales exceeded 14 million units in 2017, and the goal in 2018 is to sell more than 25 million units.
In terms of industry applications, it has laid out smart homes, Internet of Vehicles, security protection, network monitoring, energy and new economy, smart wearable devices and other fields to meet the needs of various vertical industries.
Today, China Mobile has built a new high-quality NB-IoT network infrastructure and has commercialized NB-IoT networks in 11 provinces (municipalities and districts). The first phase of NB-IoT network construction covers 346 cities. By the end of 2018, the number of NB-IoT connections nationwide exceeded 50 million, achieving county-level coverage.
It is worth mentioning that China Mobile has a special subsidy of 2 billion for the Internet of Things in 2018, hoping to further reduce terminal costs and accelerate the maturity of the terminal side of the industry. Among them, 1 billion is specially prepared for NB-IoT, with a maximum subsidy rate of 80%, and the other 1 billion is used for 4G IoT module subsidies, with a maximum subsidy rate of 50%. It has also launched two NB-IoT packages of 20 yuan and 40 yuan, hoping to meet the network needs of customers in different industries.
At the end of last year, the China Mobile Internet of Things Alliance, led by China Mobile, was established, aiming to build a large ecosystem.
China Unicom: NB-IoT, eMTC and LoRa will not fall behind
The results of China Unicom’s NB-IoT communication module project were released at the beginning of this month, causing a sensation. It is reported that the purchase volume this time is 3 million pieces, with a price limit of 35 yuan/piece. Compared with China Telecom’s 500,000-piece NB-IoT tender last year, which was known as the “first tender in the universe,” China Unicom’s tender this time has a larger scale, lower prices, and more suppliers.
During May 17 this year, China Unicom announced that it had completed the upgrade of 300,000 NB-IoT base stations and achieved nationwide coverage of the Internet of Things. The goal is to have the number of IoT connections exceed 130 million by the end of 2018, of which NB-IoT will dominate.
While accelerating NB-IoT, China Unicom is also rapidly developing eMTC network capabilities, and is also focusing on non-network connection services such as LoRa to create a diverse and multi-scenario IoT network:
As early as 2015, China Unicom formulated a strategy to develop consumer IoT services based on eSIM and created a self-developed eSIM management platform; in early 2017, the eSIM platform was launched; in April 2017, the eSIM independent number service was launched. In March 2018, it was announced that it would take the lead in launching the “eSIM One Dual Terminal” service in 6 cities including Shanghai; on April 26, at the “China Unicom 2018 Partner Conference and Communication Information Terminal Trade Fair”, the establishment of eSIM was initiated Industrial Cooperation Alliance. China Unicom is expected to launch eMTC core network capabilities in the third quarter of this year.
At the beginning of this month, in addition to the sensational results of the centralized procurement of NB-IoT communication modules, China Unicom and ZTE Kela released the “LoRa Connection Management Platform” product, which also caused quite a stir.