GSMA Partnership Programme Expands to Create the Largest IoT Community in Asia Pacific

31 Operators in 15 Countries Creating Innovative IoT Solutions; APAC IoT market to Reach 11 billion Connections by 2025

The GSMA APAC IoT Partnership Programme has expanded to include more than thirty mobile operators making it the largest IoT community in the Asia Pacific region (APAC), the GSMA announced today. The programme brings operators and their partners together including developers, manufacturers and system integrators to share best practice, discuss challenges and progress updates on the development of IoT across the region. The initiative has seen 7 operators open 9 new IoT Labs in the region to help develop new IoT-based solutions. APAC has the largest IoT market in the world and is expected to reach 11 billion connections by 2025 and be worth $386 billion, according to GSMA Intelligence.

“This is now the largest cross-regional IoT community in the world and we are already seeing the impact it is having in terms of the development of new solutions. I look forward to seeing how it continues to grow in the coming years.”

“The programme has doubled in size in less than a year and that is testament to the support, engagement and commitment of the mobile operator community who are collaborating closely with their partners to lead the expansion and growth of IoT across the region,” said Julian Gorman, Head of Asia Pacific, GSMA. “This is now the largest cross-regional IoT community in the world and we are already seeing the impact it is having in terms of the development of new solutions. I look forward to seeing how it continues to grow in the coming years.”

APAC Impact

Since launch in October 2018, the APAC IoT Partnership Programme has had an instant impact throughout the region, encouraging more than 120 companies such as IoT developers or solutions companies to work with operators. The programme has also supported the development, design and funding of 9 new IoT Labs throughout the region that is encouraging the development of new products. The IoT labs are a key mechanism for collaboration, encouraging the joint development of new use cases, services and applications that are enabling IoT innovations to be effectively deployed. The programme has also held a series of workshops exploring key industry topics such as Mobile IoT, AI and 5G as well as offered capacity building for local regulators and stakeholders and provided best practice support.

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Mobile IoT Experiencing Fastest Global Growth

The APAC region is the fastest growing IoT market in the world, accounting for approximately 40 per cent of the total global IoT spend in 2018. Global Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) or Mobile IoT network connections have also been driven primarily by the APAC region accounting for nearly 97% of all NB-IoT connections according to ABI Research. Mobile IoT networks are being merged into 5G standards to support low latency, massive IoT and large bandwidth. Thirty-seven of the world’s 119 Mobile IoT networks are also deployed in Asia Pacific across 15 countries. China in particular has been a key market in driving early adoption, accounting for 40 per cent of the global LPWA connections in 2018.

IoT @ GSMA Mobile 360 – Digital Societies

The GSMA IoT programme will host a number of different activities at GSMA M360 – Digital Societies held in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday 26 September 2019. This includes the APAC IoT Innovation Summit which provides attendees with insight from mobile operators and their partners on the latest developments in Mobile IoT. There will also be a number of interactive demos showcasing Mobile IoT, 5G, AI, Big Data Analytics, Blockchain and Drones at IoT Expo – Connected APAC. This will include hands on demonstrations from key industry verticals such as agriculture, aviation and retail and host smart home, smart traffic and smart poultry solutions.

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The Birth of Beyond Connectivity

The GSMA will launch the ‘Beyond Connectivity’ campaign at Mobile 360 – Digital Societies. Beyond Connectivity describes how mobile operators are delivering innovation and transformative solutions to customers across big data, machine learning, analytics, edge computing and distributed ledger technologies and delivering beyond just data connectivity.

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