Looking back on 2016, the technology industry is dancing around a variety of applications derived from the Internet of Things (IoT). Undoubtedly, in 2017, the technology industry still regards the Internet of Things as an industrial redemption. What kind of Internet of Things applications can inject a strong shot into the development of the technology industry?
According to forecasts made by the Institute of Industrial Intelligence (MIC), there are several key trends in the technology industry in 2017. Zhou Weizhong, consultant and director of the MIC industry, said that the MIC is still the focus of the industry's attention for the development of the technology industry in 2017, and it can be discussed from several directions - industrial ecological trends, technology / Product trends and service model trends. The impact of the Internet of Things issue on the industry in 2017 will be explained below.
Industrial ecological trends - the tide of mergers and acquisitionsThe development of the Internet of Things has made many manufacturers realize that through vertical integration, they can further grasp the dominance of the Internet of Things market and truly earn "a few barrels of gold" in the Internet of Things. Such "ideas" also allow The consolidation of the technology industry has become more and more intense. Zhou Weizhong pointed out that the mergers and acquisitions of the previous industries are mostly carried out by chip and component manufacturers to strengthen their product advantages and expand the scope of market applications, such as Microchip's acquisition of Atmel; Qualcomm's acquisition of NXP ( NXP) to expand business opportunities in the automotive market...etc.
However, in addition to the re-evolution of hardware products, the Internet of Things emphasizes the innovation and integrity of application services. It can be said that in the future IoT world, application services will drive the development of hardware design, so cross-domain integration will become the norm. For example, Softbank broke through the past application service acquisition pattern and purchased the company directly with ARM for $32 billion in the form of a service provider. This is one of the examples of cross-border consolidation in 2016.
Zhou Shixiong, consultant and deputy director of the MIC industry, believes that the cross-border integration of the industry is to achieve an infinite benefit in the IoT market. It is no longer a short-term market, but an ecological system for future development. Therefore, in addition to the trend of service providers to purchase hardware chip makers, in 2017, hardware vendors will be able to see the reinforcement software services and obtain the basis of the Big Data, and then acquire some software services. Freighter. In other words, companies with artificial intelligence (AI) technology or with huge amounts of data will further become acquisition targets.
Figure 1: Overview of vertical and vertical acquisitions in the information electronics industry (Source: MIC)
On the other hand, in addition to the industry's cross-border consolidation trend, the Internet of Things also allows the chip industry's development board to have better room to play. Zhou Weizhong pointed out that in order to seize the opportunity of the Internet of Things, it is necessary to quickly develop products into the market, so the unified standard will accelerate the speed of the development of products. However, at this stage, the standards of the Internet of Things are numerous, and the big manufacturers have their own standards, and there will be no convergence in a short period of time. Therefore, the chip industry has launched a customizable development board through cooperation and alliance formation, in response to the Internet of Things market. The trend of small and diversified products, as well as helping terminal manufacturers to shorten product development schedules and further improve product quality and performance.
Not only that, the chip industry and alliance with information companies, allowing information manufacturers such as Apple, Google, Microsoft (Microsoft) operating system (OS) and tandem cloud services to simplify the development process of the software platform, more seamless integration And enhance interoperability. And the products developed by the terminal manufacturers using the chip developer development board can also be further linked with the Internet of Things management platform developed by the information manufacturers. Through such a combination of vertical and horizontal, not only can create a win-win situation, but also chip makers and information. When the number of "users" in the factory is dominant, it has the opportunity to push up the standards of its support to become the unified norm of the Internet of Things.
Technology / Product TrendsBefore the manufacturer's "purchase of desire" has not stopped, the emerging applications or technologies related to the Internet of Things can bring new business opportunities to the technology industry in 2017? Zhou Weizhong said that applications such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR), 360-degree panoramic video, and commercial drones are the target markets that technology-related operators can focus on.
Although artificial intelligence and augmented reality/virtual reality are not new technologies, the recent development of computing technology has made artificial intelligence more significant than the past 20 years in the past 5-6 years, and has become a prominent school again. To be sure, huge amounts of data combined with artificial intelligence technology can bring more innovative services and applications to the Internet of Things. More importantly, related companies focus on deep learning while also opening up platform resources to make it easy for users. Import, once the number of users increases, can also lay the industry's position in the IoT application service market and further master the market leading power.
Zhou Shixiong emphasized that the combination of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things can create unlimited application space. Including real-time image recognition/voice translation, intelligent home assistants, service robots, unmanned vehicles, etc., are all new IoT application services that have been created or foreseen in combination with artificial intelligence.
In the aspect of augmenting reality and virtual reality, with the attempts of major companies such as Google and Microsoft to lead the development of virtual reality software and hardware standards and system platforms, the relevant standards of the Hundred Flowers are beginning to converge, not only the above-mentioned operators may become the key players in the standard, but also the market. A new wave of climax will be set off.
In addition, the development of augmented reality and virtual reality peripheral devices and application content services has also begun to accelerate, which will enable Augmented Reality related manufacturers to create more differentiated value.
While the consumer drone market continues to be dominated by DJI (DJI), commercial drones will become the focus of attention in 2017. Zhou Weizhong pointed out that commercial drones have been applied to the industries of energy, agriculture, real estate, insurance and telecommunications, etc., to carry out the task of aerial photography and inspection, and optimistic about the potential of commercial drones, Intel (Intel) in addition to generous investment In addition to several unmanned aircraft companies such as PrecisionHawk, and in 2016, MAVinci, AscTec and other drone companies were acquired. In October 2016, Intel Falcon 8+ commercial drones equipped with Intel RealSense technology were officially released.
AT&T also regularly draws drone business. In addition to detecting the status and dead space of its own network through drones and improving network service quality and efficiency, the company has also established a drone R&D team to further develop more drones. Potential service. Zhou Weizhong believes that the dynamics of Dachang has always been used as a wind direction ball for market dynamics. The field that Dachang is actively investing in is also a market that other manufacturers in the technology industry can evaluate whether to invest.
Communication industry trendIn addition to hardware and software, the Internet of Things is also an indispensable part of the Internet of Things application service. The relationship between the two is complementary. In the communication industry in 2017, with the progress of the Internet of Things, there are also new changes. Zhang Qi, consultant and director of the MIC industry, said that the Internet of Things era has promoted the development of 5G mobile technology and made the Internet of Vehicles service that has been called for many years more obvious. The business model, NB-IoT and low-power wide area network (LPWAN) are more vigorous due to the surge in IoT devices. However, the number of 4G users has started to decline due to market saturation, and it has also triggered the cross-cutting of operators for breakthroughs. Buy and buy.
5G Accelerated Development The important development of 5G communication technology in 2017 is the opening of high frequency spectrum. Zhang Qi explained that the United States has led the global open millimeter wave (mmWave) band to 5G technology. The total bandwidth of the unlicensed band is as high as 14GHz, which will affect the dynamics of subsequent chip vendors, telecom operators, equipment manufacturers and Internet application innovators.
The development of technical standards has also accelerated the development of 5G technology. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) focuses on the Long Distance Evolution (LTE) Workshop Universal Communications Service (LTE V2X) standard, Release 14, which is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2017, which will stimulate the accelerated deployment of large factories and related industries; Release 15, scheduled to be released in mid-2018, will become the standard for 5G mobile communication technology, enabling 5G technology to enter the commercial phase in 2020. The MIC estimates that by 2025 there will be 500 million users in the world who meet the 5G technical specifications.
The business model of the Internet of Vehicles is gradually showing that the growth of mobile phone shipments is slowing down. The operators have set their sights on the Internet of Vehicles, and the progress of technical specifications has also made the development of Internet of Vehicles technology and application services stronger and stronger. Zhang Qi believes that there are three major business models in the Internet of Vehicles – usage pricing, real-time response/prediction and digital life – supporting the development of the Internet of Vehicles industry.
The use of pricing has shifted the car-related industries from traditional car-buying entities to “buy servicesâ€, such as car/vehicle sharing services planned by Tesla and Ford, and Gogoro's public locomotives and car networking. Emerging services such as insurance; real-time response/prediction is the integration of large amounts of data and calculus to enable real-time services and forecasts, such as parking/taxis dynamic pricing, vehicle component life estimation, road traffic estimates, etc., to drive vehicle-related needs More intelligent, and thus the vision of autonomous driving or driverless vehicles.
Digital life is to further link consumers' needs in the car with the online world to create more business opportunities. Digital life is expected to provide car manufacturers or service providers with key value in obtaining more consumer behavior data, including AT&T's on-board audio and video services and Amazon Echo Dot car voice services.
Operators' cross-domain mergers and acquisitions break through the MIC estimate. In 2017, global 4G users accounted for 27% of global mobile communication users. This figure is 7.6% higher than that of 2015. The growth rate of 4G users has begun. Slow down, this is because the growth of global 4G users has approached saturation. In the absence of new applications to stimulate new users to adopt 4G networks, and operators to adopt low-cost rushing strategies, the average revenue per user (ARPU) of operators has been stable or even declining year by year, affecting overall revenue.
In order to break through this dilemma, in 2016, telecom operators have begun to transfer funds to other areas, such as audio and video content, online mobile advertising, etc., such as AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner, Verizon's acquisition and Yahoo, all to reinforce the operator's existing operating projects. Depth and breadth. Zhang Qi stressed that the cross-border mergers and acquisitions of telecom operators will continue in 2017 to increase their competitiveness in the post 4G era.
LED industry is still grimEven though LEDs play the role of "peripheral devices" in the IoT world, the business opportunities brought by the Internet of Things also benefit many components, such as processors, radio frequency (RF) chips, microcontrollers, etc., but LEDs in 2017 The year will still be affected by the market's "excessive demand" and still cannot perform better.
Dai Zhenjia, general manager of Nichia, Taiwan, said that the LED market in 2017 is the same as in 2016 and 2015. It is not very optimistic. At this time, due to oversupply in the market, the impact on the LED low-end products market is quite large. Therefore, in 2017, LEDs should move toward the high-end application market, and there will be a greater chance.
Smart lighting, including automotive LEDs, human lighting and plant lighting, projectors, automotive lasers, OLEDs for wearable devices, and Micro LEDs, etc., are all new markets that LED manufacturers can bet on.
Internet of Things can still create new business opportunities in 2017Gartner, the market regulator, also believes that the mainstream of the industry in 2017 is still the Internet of Things. The most important technology event in early 2017, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), will focus on emerging consumer technologies, especially in the IoT-related areas such as connected cars and wearables.
From the above, we can find that the technology industry in 2017 still relies heavily on the development of the Internet of Things. Many market-tuning institutions still believe that the realization of the Internet of Things world is just beginning. As the global Internet of Things architecture becomes more and more complete, it is believed that the Internet of Things issue will bring more market dawn to the technology industry in the next few years.
Table 1: Number of global IoT installations from 2013 to 2018 (unit: million units; source: Gartner)
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