The internet of things (IoT) market in China reached more than 1 trillion yuan ($146 billion) last year, and is expected to maintain rapid growth in the next few years. In China, IoT has enjoyed a compound annual growth of more than 25 percent from 2009 to 2017, and the IoT cloud platform has become the key to ignite competition in the field.
IoT basically refers to the connection of various electronic devices to the internet via technologies such as wireless sensor networks. A report known as the Annual IoT Industry Development Report of China stated that the nation’s IoT market will hit 1.5 trillion yuan by the end of this year.
“Fueled by the government’s supportive policies, forward-thinking domestic internet and tech titans, the country’s IoT sector has actually entered a new stage of rapid development over the past year,” said Cao Wenzhong, vice-president of the China Economic Information Service.
From the past few years, China has been witnessing booming industrial application of IoT. A large number of IoT testing has been gradually conducted in various segments including transportation, logistics, environmental protection, healthcare, security and electricity.
The report also claimed that with the emerging smart recognition, sensors, blockchain and other new IoT-related technologies, IoT products are developing toward the smart, convenient and low-power consumption direction, such as this Australian based company that offer IoT products and services such as their IoT Core.
However, there are still a lot of challenges on the way. A lot more efforts should be made to increase investment in IoT research and development. Also, the country should actively participate in the international standard-making process and focus on security as well.
Last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology launched a plan to accelerate the development of IoT. The ministry set the goal of enabling more than 1.7 billion public machine-to-machine connections by 2020, with an IoT market size of more than 1.5 trillion yuan.