Jasper, a global Internet of Things (IoT) platform provider, has formed an IoT partnership with China Unicom to provide IoT services for enterprise customers in China. China Unicom will offer a global platform through which companies can launch, manage and monetize IoT service businesses throughout China.
According to Jasper, its Control Center platform will provide customers with essential IoT capabilities like mobile service management, real-time diagnostics, robust rating and intelligent business process automation. “In combination with China Unicom’s high-performance mobile network, the Jasper platform enables rapid time-to-market for businesses, and provides a flexible, turnkey solution that can be configured to meet the specialised needs of businesses across any industry,” the company said.
“Cloud-based delivery brings the advantages of agility, efficiency, global consistency and anywhere-access so businesses can scale their connected services at will.”
Jasper claims that China Unicom offers a unique proposition to global enterprises because it stands alone in China in using the same 3G and 4G technologies (WCDMA and FDD-LTE) as a majority of mobile operators worldwide. “When combined with Jasper’s Control Center platform, this provides a significant competitive advantage for China Unicom by enabling seamless entry into the Chinese market for multinational enterprises,” Jasper said.
Jasper has a network of operator partners worldwide serving over 1,600 enterprises across six continents. “Together, China Unicom and Jasper are uniquely positioned to enable accelerated adoption across the broad scope of IoT-ready industries in China and enable China’s IoT companies to easily scale their global operations, while also enabling a direct path for outside enterprises to break into the Chinese market,” it says.
Mr Tian Wenke, general manager, Business Customer Department at China Unicom, said: “We’re already serving more than 10 million IoT connections, working with a large number of automotive manufacturers and supporting various applications across smart cities and buildings, smart utilities, smart home appliances, video surveillance and health monitoring. We’re looking to expand to billions of connections in the next couple of years, and we needed a premier IoT platform partner to enable that rapid growth.”
According to recent research by the GSMA, China is now the world’s largest machine-to-machine (M2M) market with 50 million devices connected. China also boasts the world’s largest car market. Automotive technology research firm SBD notes that China is set to become the global leader for embedded telematics before the end of the decade.
“This partnership brings together China Unicom’s existing relationships with 26 major car manufacturers and Jasper’s experience with 11 car manufacturers, creating an opportunity to address the burgeoning connected car market in China,” Jasper said.
