Official announcement: 2021 Ideal ONE may use Horizon's dual "Journey 3" chips

After receiving an order for 2 million NB-IoT chips from China Mobile Internet of Things Co., Ltd. in June last year, CoreWing Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "CoreWing Information") recently became the sole supplier of China Mobile Internet of Things again.

2021 will continue the chip shortage crisis of last year, and the same is true for the Internet of Things industry. After experiencing widespread chip shortages, price increases, and operating difficulties, the profits of the Internet of Things industry have been redistributed within the industrial chain, ushering in a year of accelerated market reshuffle.

Therefore, against this background, the fact that CoreWing Information has received another 8 million chip orders is not only a testament to the quality of its products, but also a sign of the sudden rise of domestic "core" forces amid changing market conditions.

NB-IoT is based on domestic applications

It took less than 8 months from project establishment to agreement freezing, making NB-IoT one of the fastest-established 3GPP standards in history. As NB-IoT officially enters the commercial stage, the industry's attention and discussion about it are gradually heating up. Li Jian, senior vice president of CoreWing Information Technology, told Jiwei.com that NB-IoT technology is a 5G mMTC standard led by the Chinese ecosystem and vigorously cultivated by the Chinese industry. Therefore, its first application markets are all in China.

With the continuous advancement of new infrastructure, the Internet of Things, as an important part of the new infrastructure, began to accelerate in 2020. This momentum also continued this year. Coupled with the intensification of the chip shortage and the surge of the localization wave, the localization product solution not only has cost advantages, but more importantly, it makes the supply chain more secure and reliable, laying a solid foundation for the development of my country's Internet of Things and new infrastructure.

At present, the number of NB-IoT connected devices in China has exceeded 100 million, and there have been new developments in technology. Domestic companies that have been deeply involved in the IoT chip market have made sufficient preparations to make great strides in the accelerating 5G IoT field. Among them, CoreWing Information has achieved remarkable results in the NB-IoT field.

Jiwei.com learned that CoreWing Information's third-generation 5G NB-IoT system-on-chip SoC XY1100 has multiple advantages such as wide voltage, low cost, low power consumption, and high reliability. The chip device life can reach 15 years after reliability verification. When it was first released in June 2018, it broke through the integration bottleneck of global cellular communication chip development with a completely independent and innovative CMOS PA on-chip integrated new architecture. More importantly, the design, production, packaging, testing and sales of XY1100 are all in China, making it a truly "nationally produced" product.

Li Jian pointed out that the two operators' biddings last year gave CoreWing Information products the opportunity to enter the mainstream supply chain and at the same time become China Mobile's single-source procurement supplier. The market and product tests that needed to be passed in this process were quite rigorous.

He admitted that the industry and the market are concerned about large-scale purchases of NB-IoT chips, especially the reliability and supply capacity of the new platform. Last year, the company received a single order of 2 million NB-IoT chips from China Mobile and China Telecom, proving that CoreWing Information has been recognized by the market. The centralized purchase of 8 million chips by China Mobile IoT has injected a shot in the arm to accelerate the development of NB-IoT localization, allowing the NB-IoT ecosystem to flourish in thousands of industries.

华为无线产品线副总裁曹明也曾指出，NB-IoT中国生态已经积累起显著的先发优势，国内伙伴大力拓展海外市场，NB-IoT厂家向海外供货模组超过2000万片。NB-IoT产业已经进入良性的快速发展阶段，未来几年还将进一步加速。

The Internet of Things has arrived, and the wide-area Internet of Things is also beginning to emerge

In the market space structure of the Internet of Things business, the scale of the medium and low-speed Internet of Things industry is huge. The scale of low-speed Internet of Things connections in the distribution of IoT connections accounts for more than 60%, mainly meeting the connection requirements of low power consumption and wide coverage. Among them, NB-IoT technology is more suitable for business scenarios with low requirements for mobility and latency, small data volume, and low power consumption compared to 2G technology. At the same time, NB-IoT also has the core advantages of low power consumption, massive connections, wide coverage, and low cost. This also means that after 2G technology, NB-IoT technology will become the main carrier technology for domestic low-speed Internet of Things market services.

Research firm Counterpoint pointed out that from now to 2025, the number of 2G/3G IoT connections will be almost negligible. Therefore, in the process of intergenerational migration of cellular IoT connections, the original 2G/3G connections can only be taken over by NB-IoT and 4G. Among them, NB-IoT will take over most of the connections after 2G/3G frequency reduction and network withdrawal. The number of global IoT cellular connections will exceed 5 billion in 2025, of which NB-IoT will contribute nearly half.

From the perspective of technological evolution, according to Xie Yunzhou from the 5G Internet of Things Industry Alliance, NB-IoT, LTE Cat.1 bis, LTE Cat.4, and 5G Sub-6GHz will form a step-by-step coverage and dominate the development trend of cellular Internet of Things in the next 5 to 10 years.

Another major industry trend is that the integration of chips, communication modules, solutions and smart terminals will become higher and higher. For example, the number of peripheral devices that can be integrated into communication modules will become fewer and fewer, and only efforts can be made on software function expansion and customer service. At the same time, SiP packaging is challenging the dominant position of shielding covers, and how to adapt to the various demands of thousands of industries will also become a focus. In addition, in the future, NB-IoT technology and other technologies will also be further integrated and developed, such as NB-IoT+GNSS, NB-IoT+TEE SIM, NB-IoT+GPRS and other combinations.

In terms of application scenarios, the first major application area is industrial. Various meters in industrial scenarios (including water meters, gas meters, thermal energy, etc.) and various sensors and remote communications in industrial manufacturing all require NB-IoT technology. The second category is asset management tracking, such as remote management of battery replacement and energy storage, which requires remote communication. NB-IoT is very suitable, especially with the further improvement of operator networks, and its penetration rate will increase. In addition, there are many more fields such as medical care, big health, smart agriculture, wearables, etc., where NB-IoT will be very useful.

Wang Chao, marketing director of China Mobile IoT Intelligent Module Department, said that according to their preliminary estimates, the industrial meter market has a scale of 500 million based on population distribution; and the asset management tracking market may be three or four times as large.

Taking the industrial metering market as an example, the cumulative shipments of NB-IoT smart water meters in China have exceeded 10 million units, becoming the second smart terminal to break through the 10 million-level NB-IoT connection. At the NB-IoT Billion Development Summit hosted by Huawei and the IoT Think Tank last year, relevant industry experts revealed that the proportion of NB-IoT in smart meters of mainstream gas meter manufacturers reached 80%, and the proportion of NB-IoT in smart meters of mainstream water meter manufacturers reached 60%, marking that NB-IoT has entered a new stage of large-scale deployment in the largest market segment of smart meter reading.

In May last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Deeply Promoting the Comprehensive Development of Mobile Internet of Things", which clearly stated that "for key areas such as energy meters, we will promote the formulation and implementation of technical standards and interconnection standards for mobile Internet of Things terminals and platforms" and "use energy meters and other fields as entry points to help improve public service capabilities." Promoting the implementation of mobile Internet of Things standards and applications in the public utility sector is not just about replacing an NB-IoT meter, but requires in-depth industry innovation and pain point solutions from multiple aspects such as terminals, pipelines, and platforms. The industry needs more manufacturers that can provide end-to-end solutions.

At present, CoreWing Information has customers such as China Mobile IoT and other mainstream module manufacturers in the industry, and has entered the terminal partners Jinka, Xinao, Qianjia, Wenxin NB-IoT gas meters, Ningshui, Xintian and Sanchuan NB-IoT IoT water meters, etc., and applied to IoT application scenarios such as smart meter reading, smart smoke detection, smart home, asset tracking, shared bicycles, etc. In addition, XY1100 has passed the rigorous certification tests of leading customers in the smart gas meter and smart water meter industries, and has completed field tests in various scenarios in 35 cities.

From the perspective of operators, by the end of 2020, my country has built more than 900,000 5G NB-IoT base stations, which constitute the main body of 5G NB-IoT wide coverage and infrastructure. In addition to base station deployment, operators have explored a lot of network optimization and maintenance experience. On-demand optimization and small station optimization and blind spot filling have matured, which can ensure the timely launch of NB-IoT projects.