China currently counts 100 million cellular M2M connections
SHANGHAI – China’s machine-to-machine market is expected to reach 1 billion connections by 2020, with the majority coming from the developing low-power, wide-area market, according to Mats Granryd, director general at GSMA, speaking during a presentation at the Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2016 event.
The executive said China is currently the world’s largest M2M market with nearly 100 million cellular M2M connections. By 2020, the GSMA forecasts a total of 350 million cellular M2M connections in the Chinese market, Granryd said.
GSMA Intelligence and the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology recently unveiled a report highlighting an additional 730 million connections will be enabled by LPWA technology in China, taking the total figure to just over 1 billion connections. By 2025, it is expected that half of the world’s 28 billion connected devices will be suitable for connection by LPWA networks, the study revealed.
“With government support, China has quickly become the world’s largest M2M market, and LPWA will play a fundamental part of its future growth, presenting new opportunities for key industry sectors and for operators to provide connectivity across the country,” said Alex Sinclair, CTO at GSMA. “The GSMA’s Mobile IoT Initiative is working with China’s mobile network operators to deliver commercial LPWA solutions in licensed spectrum to accelerate adoption and transform the development of the ‘internet of things’ in areas such as agriculture, automotive and utilities.”
LPWA networks are designed for M2M applications that have low data rates, require long battery lives and operate unattended for long periods of time, often in remote locations.
The GSMA sad its Mobile IoT initiative is currently being backed by 36 global mobile operators, device makers, and chipset module and infrastructure companies. The IoT initiative is working to accelerate the development of LPWA solutions and is supporting multiple global pilots with full commercial solutions expected in market later this year.
