There is an urgent shortage of IoT batteries. Where will the smart container market go during the epidemic?

February 27 news (Text/Tan Lun) "Our battery supplier is in Wuhan, and this is the component we need most at the moment." When talking about the impact of the epidemic, Li Dong, sales manager of a smart container company in Shenzhen, told Jiwei.com.

The company's predicament is also a microcosm of the impact on domestic smart container companies under the current epidemic. As one of the businesses brought about by emerging technologies in recent years, the smart container business behind it has gradually gained momentum with the development of the Internet of Things. According to its sales staff, smart containers have currently achieved a penetration rate of about 7% in the global container market and are still growing gradually.

"The current battery inventory can only last until early April." The sales manager told Jiwei.com that if the Wuhan epidemic continues at the end of April, it will have a great impact on the company's delivery.

Everything is ready except the battery

As we all know, containers, which are commonly seen at docks, are the core carriers of global cargo transportation. 80% of global trade cargo is delivered through containers. From sellers to buyers, a series of processes such as logistics, insurance, and freight forwarding are required to achieve the delivery of goods between buyers and sellers. However, the delivery and operation management of containers, which connect the entire world trade, is not the most effective at present. The location and status of the containers during transportation cannot be controlled in real time, which is extremely inconvenient for the operation management of containers and the operation of world trade and global supply chains.

The smart container was born in this context. It is a standard container permanently equipped with electronic devices that can transmit data (including location, temperature, movement, vibration, door opening, etc.), and can also use built-in sensors in the cargo to understand the temperature, vibration, humidity and other cargo status information.

Among them, batteries are the core components used to equip many smart container products. Different from traditional rechargeable batteries, smart containers use disposable batteries, but they have a long service life, often up to 5-10 years, and are often used to provide power for smart Internet of Things devices. In China, Wuhan is the most important production base for this type of Internet of Things battery. "This type of battery production plant is basically in Wuhan." Li Dong told Jiwei.com, which is also the reason why many smart container companies are quite anxious.

In addition to batteries, Li Dong told Jiwei.com that the core components of smart containers also include chips and various sensors, but the latter are still dominated by international manufacturers due to their high requirements and the lack of domestic alternative manufacturers. Among them, sensors are mainly STMicroelectronics and Maxim, and chips are mainly Qualcomm products.

Taking chips as an example, Li Dong told Jiwei.com that their company's products use Qualcomm MDM9207-1, which is one of Qualcomm's first mobile connectivity chipsets for IoT devices. This chipset is based on Qualcomm MDM9207-1 baseband chip and is dedicated to IoT applications. It can not only ensure security, but also optimize mobile network connections and computing processing capabilities. It supports LTE Cat.1 and has a maximum download speed of 10Mbps. Two AA batteries can provide up to 10 years of battery life. Therefore, it is often used in smart lamps, industrial equipment, smart meters, medical equipment and asset tracking systems.

Based on these hardware, Li Dong's company will conduct self-research to turn them into suitable products, and then develop a management system and visualization platform through software, and finally provide them to customers as a complete packaged solution. "This is also the main business model of many smart container companies." Li Dong said.

It is precisely for the above reasons that the supply of chips and sensors of Li Dong's company has been less affected by the epidemic. "Except for batteries, there are no major problems with other required hardware and service links." Li Dong told Jiwei.com that the company has resumed work for about a week, and the current inventory of components is sufficient, only batteries will run out in early April. "I hope that the Wuhan epidemic will end in April and resume normal production." Li Dong said with a little expectation.

The epidemic may be an opportunity

"It is still a niche market at present." Li Dong told Jiwei.com that the company's smart container business is mainly for small and medium-sized shipping companies, and some large companies are relatively cautious for cost-saving considerations. "For a volume of several million, they will generally only cooperate with us for tens of thousands of units." Li Dong said that the current operation focus of large shipping companies is to reduce costs and sales prices, rather than to improve services, so the enthusiasm is not high, but small and medium-sized company customers have basically all upgraded to smart containers.