Qualcomm, a giant, joins hands with Qianxun Location across the ocean, and the Internet of Things opens the second half of the competition in the entire industry chain

The catalytic role of the Internet of Things in disruptive industrial revolutions is already a cliché, but on the eve of true large-scale application, the signals released by some giants are still an important footnote in the history of industry evolution that cannot be ignored.

On January 31, Qianxun Location Network Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Qianxun Location"), which is committed to empowering the era of the Internet of Everything with precise location services, announced that it has reached a strategic cooperation agreement with Qualcomm, one of the world's largest chip manufacturers. Qualcomm will integrate the high-precision location services provided by Qianxun Location into the Snapdragon X5 LTE in-vehicle communication chip launched for connected cars. The product will be available on the market as early as the third quarter of this year.

"An important task we are doing now is to promote chip manufacturers, module manufacturers, board manufacturers and antenna manufacturers in the field to integrate with our precise positioning services and work together to provide the ultimate solution." Chen Jinpei, CEO of Qianxun Location, said in an exclusive interview with Leifeng.com that the competition of the entire industry chain has become the main theme of the second half of the competition in the Internet of Things market, and high-precision positioning capability is one of the key technologies driving the integration of this industry chain.

Based on the basic positioning data of the Beidou satellite system (compatible with GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo), relying on more than 2,000 ground-based augmentation stations across the country and independently developed algorithms, Qixun Location, the builder and operator of the National Beidou Ground-Based Augmentation System "One Network Nationwide", said that they can now perform big data calculations through Internet technology to provide high-precision positioning and extended services for various terminals across the country, including vehicles.

This time, Qualcomm chose to cooperate with Qianxun Location, which fully reflects the strategic vision of this overseas giant that is constantly increasing its voice in the field of Internet of Vehicles. Unlike many startups that emphasize visual perception solutions, Qualcomm, as a giant that is well versed in industry development trends, believes that high-precision positioning services must be the basic capabilities of autonomous driving and Internet of Vehicles . If you want to gain the greatest support for this capability in the Chinese market, cooperating with Qianxun Location is a good choice.

From the details of the official cooperation, it is not difficult to see that the two companies have previously done a lot of research and development work together. Qualcomm's Snapdragon X5 LTE, which integrates Qianxun location services, not only has the characteristics of integrated leading LTE connections, fast downloads and rapid applications, but also has a built-in Qualcomm GNSS positioning engine that can track multiple satellite positioning systems at the same time and perform application processing, which has accumulated a lot of Qualcomm's expertise in satellite positioning technology.

Once the integration of Qianxun Location RTK differential service is completed, Snapdragon X5 LTE will not only help connected cars achieve sub-meter positioning accuracy, but also help vehicles obtain high-precision positioning results even when satellite signals are blocked for a long time. It is reported that the Snapdragon X5 LTE integrated with Qianxun Location Service will be launched in the market as early as the third quarter of 2018, and is expected to be put into use in multiple models that will be mass-produced in 2019. At present, the chip has been confirmed by many car manufacturers and Tier 1 for use, which also preliminarily proves the accuracy of the judgment of the two companies.

This is just the "pre-battle" of the extensive cooperation between Qixun Location and Qualcomm. Both parties have stated that they will be committed to providing more complete solutions for connected car manufacturers and Tier 1 component suppliers, significantly reducing various costs while providing high-performance services, and promoting the rapid progress of autonomous driving vehicles towards industrialization.

Different from the traditional in-vehicle positioning and navigation, when high-precision positioning becomes the underlying capability of the car, it will create many more application scenarios. Chen Jinpei listed three application directions for Leifeng.com:

• First, it provides lane-level navigation capabilities;

• The second is to provide terminal navigation services to solve the "last mile" problem;

• The third is to serve as a "safety functional component" for autonomous driving vehicles.

"The first two have been discussed a lot, but the last application is also very important. Previously, autonomous driving manufacturers often encountered a headache. When only high-speed sections were allowed to enable autonomous driving, many systems misjudged the road section where the vehicle was located, which directly restricted the application of the technology." Chen Jinpei said that after trying many visual positioning methods, the car manufacturer found that it was much simpler to use absolute positioning technology. "Our high-precision positioning service can greatly improve the accuracy of the vehicle's own positioning judgment, ensuring that the vehicle can only enable the autonomous driving function of a specific section of the road in an accurate and safe area. At this time, the high-precision positioning unit naturally becomes an important 'safety component' of the vehicle."

All of the above applications will gradually be reflected in the cooperation between Qixun Location and manufacturers such as Qualcomm. Both chip giants such as Qualcomm and service providers such as Qixun Location are committed to integrating upstream and downstream resources, modularizing high-precision positioning technology as soon as possible, and integrating it into advanced assisted driving and unmanned driving applications in specific scenarios in the form of solutions.

The powerful combination of Qixun Location and Qualcomm further proves that industrial competition in the era of mobile Internet of Things has become increasingly fierce, and cross-regional cooperation and competition among industry giants have begun.

"As soon as the news came out, some people in the industry asked why Qianxun Location did not cooperate with domestic chip manufacturers first, but chose Qualcomm instead. Will this have an impact on the development of the domestic industry?" An industry insider who did not want to be named said that this understanding is too narrow. "We should learn from Qualcomm's strategic vision and action, but also reflect on why we have such a good infrastructure but have not formed an industrial chain around it first?"

Through the development mode of "integration of heaven and earth", China has established Beidou high-precision positioning "infrastructure". At present, most parts of the country can enjoy the 7*24 hours Beidou high-precision positioning service with dynamic centimeter level provided by Qianxun Location. This large-scale basic service is not available in Europe and the United States. Based on this capability, China's mobile Internet of Things industry can completely explore a path of its own and achieve "overtaking on the curve".

"As a promoter of Beidou high-precision positioning services, Qianxun Location does the most basic work. We must first ensure that it can be empowered in various fields and even extend to overseas, so that the value of 'infrastructure' can be truly brought into play." Chen Jinpei said that as a provider of basic capabilities, Qianxun Location must be "open", "but I also sincerely hope to see Chinese companies participate more in the upstream and downstream of the industry, because we all know that competition in the era of the Internet of Things has become competition across the entire industry chain. Only by jointly creating products with lower costs, higher performance, and greater stability will consumers pay for them."

According to the IoT industry survey report released by Verizon, the largest telecommunications company in the United States, in 2017, the manufacturing industry and the transportation industry led the investment list with $183 billion and $85 billion respectively. Industrial applications represented by autonomous driving are on the eve of an explosion, and the horn of competition in the second half of the IoT has sounded.

Looking at the entire market, cross-border, integration, full-stack, hardware and software integration... have almost become the unanimous choice of industry players. It is no longer a new thing for giants to integrate resources globally and accelerate technology iteration. For example, Qualcomm was reported at the end of last year to be conducting autonomous driving road tests in California based on Ford Motor Company. At that time, this chip manufacturer giant in the eyes of everyone had already appeared on the lengthy road test list of the California Department of Motor Vehicles along with car companies and Tier 1. In the era of the Internet of Things, there are no more giants fighting alone. The one who quickly integrates core technologies and integrates industry chain resources as soon as possible is the king.

A new round of innovation and upgrading will drive a new round of industrial development. Today, as the value of high-precision positioning services continues to increase, domestic manufacturers who are "close to the water" of Beidou's high-precision positioning service infrastructure may lose their rare advantages to foreign competitors if they do not speed up the pace of industrial chain construction.

This worry is not groundless. In early 2017, the "Internet of Things Volume of the Information and Communication Industry Development Plan (2016-2020)" was released. While describing the development roadmap of my country's Internet of Things during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, it also pointed out the bottlenecks in the development of my country's Internet of Things industry, among which the shortcomings of the industry's underlying R&D capabilities are the most important.

The "volume" points out that the bottlenecks and deep-seated problems facing the development of my country's Internet of Things industry are still prominent, such as the weak competitiveness of the industrial ecosystem, the weak core basic capabilities such as chips, sensors, and operating systems, the weak R&D capabilities of high-end products, and the large gap in original innovation capabilities compared with developed countries; for example, the industrial chain's synergy is not strong, and there is a lack of leading enterprises that integrate upstream and downstream resources of the industrial chain and lead the coordinated development of the industry.

According to the analysis report of Changjiang Securities Research Institute, the key to the Internet of Things lies in the word "interconnection", and the information collection, transmission and processing involved cannot be separated from the communication function and processing power of sensors and chips. This is an opportunity for the entire industry, but it may also mean the beginning of a major reshuffle. Domestic chip and sensor manufacturers are actually feeling the pressure of transformation now.

"Many people in the industry are worried that our IoT industry will also become hollow. On the surface, we are doing well, but we still don't have core technology," said an industry expert. "In this way, most of our market profits will be taken away by others. What's worse, the future development direction will also be determined by others!"

A practitioner who is deeply engaged in the research and development of autonomous driving vehicles told Leifeng.com that it is not uncommon for the industrialization of domestic chip and sensor technology to lag behind industry demand. According to him, domestic autonomous driving R&D teams generally support Beidou services, and from actual measurements, Beidou's positioning accuracy in China is relatively better. "However, many small teams directly integrate based on FPGA, which is troublesome when it comes to 'tapeout', and the cost is too high, which limits the use of technology." This situation has emerged because domestic manufacturers have been slow to form a Beidou high-precision positioning service industry chain. Only by making up their minds to give up short-term interests and accelerate technology reserves can they hope to turn the tide in the second half of the Internet of Things competition.

Regardless, the integration of the entire industry chain of software and hardware has become one of the irreversible trends in the era of the Internet of Things, and the precise spatial and temporal perception capability is becoming an indispensable part of the transformation as the ID that connects everything. "In this changing world, the only thing that remains unchanged is spatial and temporal information." Chen Jinpei said that the in-depth mining of spatial and temporal big data will become an important topic in the era of the Internet of Things, and he hopes to work with more partners, especially Chinese manufacturers, to explore a larger market space.