NB-IoT chip shipments to China will surge to 100 mln this yr

Shipments of NB-IoT (narrow band IoT) chip modules to China will jump to 100 million units in 2018 from 5 million in 2017, according to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT). Growth will be pushed by concerted efforts on the part of the government and private sectors to boost the development of NB-IoT applications. 

CAICT sources said that in mid last year, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) released IoT-dedicated spectrums to support the development of comprehensive NB-IoT industrial ecosystems. The MIIT is also stepping up the establishment of domestic NB-IoT standards to drive the overall development of related industries in 2018. 

Qualcomm, Taiwan's MediaTek, and China's Huawei Hisilicon, SMICom Wireless Solutions, Unigroup Spreadtrum RDA and Sanechips have all launched NB-IoT chips. In addition, Alibaba, Baidu Tencent, Huawei and others have joined forces with the CAICT and state-run telecom operators China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom to set up an NB-IoT industrial alliance. This is expected to drastically fuel deployments in NB-IoT applications in China in 2018 and following years. 

MIIT has estimated the number of NBo-IoT base stations to increase sharply from 400,000 in 2017 to 1.5 million in 2020, when there will be over 600 million M2M (machine to machine) connections associated with NB-IoT applications.