China is now the world’s largest machine to machine (M2M) market with 50 million devices connected
Mobile World Congress: Jasper, a global Internet of Things (IoT) platform provider, and China Unicom, the world’s third-largest mobile network operator, have today announced that they have partnered to power IoT services for enterprise customers in China.
By partnering with Jasper, China Unicom will offer its customers a global platform through which companies can successfully launch, manage and monetise IoT service businesses throughout China.
China Unicom has made great strides in preparing the market for the benefits of IoT in China, where the scope and scale of the opportunity for enterprises to capitalise on IoT technology is vast. According to recent research by the GSMA, China is now the world’s largest machine to machine (M2M) market with 50 million devices connected.
To address this opportunity, China Unicom selected Jasper’s Control Center platform to provide its customers with essential IoT capabilities like mobile service management, real time diagnostics, robust rating and intelligent business process automation. In combination with China Unicom’s high performance mobile network, the Jasper platform enables rapid time to market for businesses, and provides a flexible, turnkey solution that can be configured to meet the specialised needs of businesses across any industry. Cloud-based delivery brings the advantages of agility, efficiency, global consistency and anywhere-access so businesses can scale their connected services at will.
Simon Berman, vice president of product marketing at Jasper, commented on the deal: “China is very exciting for us because the Chinese market is the single biggest IoT market in the world, so there’s a huge opportunity there. Also, now we can go back to our current customers and tell them they can expand into these new regions at very little cost, so we’re introducing them into the Chinese market.”
China has the world’s largest car market, representing a significant opportunity for the proliferation of connected cars. Automotive technology research firm SBD has noted that China is set to become the global leader for embedded telematics before the end of the decade.
This partnership brings together China Unicom’s existing relationships with 26 major car manufacturers and Jasper’s experience with 11 car manufacturers, creating an opportunity to address the burgeoning Connected Car market in China.
China Unicom offers a unique proposition to global enterprises as it stands alone in China in using the same 3G and 4G technologies (WCDMA and FDD-LTE) as a majority of mobile operators worldwide, Jasper said. When combined with Jasper’s Control Center platform, this provides a significant competitive advantage for China Unicom by enabling seamless entry into the Chinese market for multinational enterprises.
Said Tian Wenke, general manager, business customer department at China Unicom: “With Jasper, we’re primed to break new ground in the IoT. We’re already serving more than 10 million IoT connections, working with a largest number of automotive manufacturers and supporting various applications across smart cities and buildings, smart utilities, smart home appliances, video surveillance and health monitoring. We’re looking to expand to billions of connections in the next couple of years, and we needed a premier IoT platform partner to enable that rapid growth.”
“China is a large IT market full of potential and competiveness,” said Amy Teng, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner. “Gartner forecasts that the Internet of Things (IoT) will include 26 billion units installed by 2020.”
China Unicom is the latest to join Jasper’s global network of operator partners, which includes AT&T, NTT DOCOMO, Telefónica, América Móvil, VimpelCom, KPN, SingTel, Telenor, Etisalat, Telstra, Telecom Italia, Rogers and more.
