Demand for Internet of Things (IoT) chipset is projected to increase 50 percent in China as the global market for IoT chip is on track to reach a sharp growth this year. According to a new report by Digitimes, which cited industry sources, the growth in IoT chipset demand in China will be buoyed by the Chinese government’s large investment in efforts to develop IoT applications. On a global scale, Gartner recently predicted that the IoT and artificial intelligence segments are expected to help boost information technology investments with a 4.5-percent increase in financial commitments this year alone.
More specifically, MediaTek, Taiwan’s leading fabless semiconductor company, has seen an increase in the adoption of IoT modules designed to enable connection and for monitoring activities, thanks to the company’s modem chipset solutions that can last up to five years. Last January, during the Consumer Electronics Show 2018, MediaTek unveiled a new lineup of specialized system-on-chip products for the home automation and IoT connectivity market including MT7622, which features 4×4 MIMO on 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 on a chip with a Wi-Fi accelerator. The chip also comes with Smart Quality of Service to automatically allocate network resources among network devices based on their individual requirements. Meanwhile, China Mobile and China Unicom have been working together since 2017 in collaboration with other IoT service providers to tap the business opportunities in this segment in the country. MediaTek also saw its IoT chip shipment to China rise to more than 10 million units last year after China Mobile and China Unicom started dabbling in the IoT market in 2017.
As demand for IoT chip in China is expected to drastically rise this year, major Chinese companies are already making impressive accomplishments in terms of IoT sales in the past year. For example, Xiaomi’s IoT products sold as part of its Home lineup eclipsed ten million sales on a global scale last December, three years after the Chinese electronics and software company made a formal commitment in the IoT industry. The company’s accomplishment in the IoT market also marks a success in its strategy to diversify its business as well as a big boost to China’s IoT market as a whole.