“At MediaTek, we believe that IoT will allow a revolution of connected devices” – Mr. Kuldeep Malik, Country Head – Corporate Sales International, MediaTek India
What are IoT involvements in various sectors?
Internet of Things (IoT) is slowly transforming the way we operate and function both in our business and day to day lives. Right from healthcare to smart homes to smart cities, every sector is being touched by the IoT wave. As per reports, it is estimated that there will be 50 billion connected devices by 2020. In the healthcare sector, from fitness to preventive healthcare to checking medical conditions, IoT wearables have already started making inroads towards its worth. Products like wearable watches, walking sticks, fitness bands, and health bands are not only calculating calories and number of steps, but also work as ECG monitoring devices and blood count tests. Additionally, smart homes and home automation is definitely one of the next upcoming sectors that IoT is going to disrupt and revolutionise. One no longer needs to fear losing their house keys or mobile phone, IoT devices are now making it simpler for people to locate and trace their lost goods. We are slowly moving towards building an unprecedented scenario like where all the vehicles are inter-connected through a system that can manage traffic, predict and tackle congestion, sense a serious problem and alert authorities and response teams in case of accidents. In addition to the above illustrated sectors, there also is a way to build IoT devices that matches the Indian environment and factor in the ever changing temperatures, dust, humidity and blotchy power supply. In light of this, it would be right to estimate that IoT is slowly and steadily transforming and working towards making our lives hassle free.
What is MediaTek doing in IoT?
As a semiconductor company, MediaTek is positioned to act as a key enabler in the IoT ecosystem, because we provide the technology building blocks for the “things” within IoT. These infrastructure components help collect, process, and transmit real world signals and data for IoT products and applications. The underlying core capabilities shall include connectivity, collection and computing (or analysis) as essential building blocks for the IoT ecosystem.
For instance, the array of sensors is now rapidly expanding beyond motion and image sensing to include those that measure humidity, altitude, food calorie composition, and human health indicators as a result of the increase in the variety of consumer IoT applications such as wearables. And within the embedded device space, connectivity and network processing-related functions are increasingly being combines with embedded processors in applications beyond mobile phones, like combining wireless connectivity chipsets with integrated Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. For instance, just very recently in India, we announced the availability of the MT7697 – that supports Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and provides the highest integration among comparable SoCs, combining and optimizing DB WiFi, BLE, CM4 and RAM.
In terms of product range, MediaTek has also launched various IoT solutions, covering Wearable, smart travel, health monitor, smart home, and other segments. We have made some in-roads in the Wearable segment, especially in kids’ smart watch and bracelet with tracking and positioning functions. Numerous manufactures like Intex, Garmin, Fitbit etc. have introduced wearable products on our solutions to propel the IoT market. In smart home segment, already we have a presence in consumer products like smart socket, smart remote controller etc. M2M is another very important segment for us, which is currently seeing a double-digit growth in the global market. MediaTek plays an important position in automotive, metering, POS, security device and applications. We are closely working with a number of M2M module manufacturers like SIMCOM, Quectel, Ogemray, AcSIP, and Mobiletek.
What are MediaTek innovations in IoT?
At MediaTek, we constantly seek to provide innovative solutions that will help power the next range of wearable and IoT devices. A bit of this we have covered in the previous question. But to provide a detailed account of our product range, broadly, we are actively powering products in following product segments; Smart consumer electronics, POS (Point of Sales) terminals, Vehicle trackers, Automatic Meters readers, Fitness/Health Wearables and Connected Homes.
M2M: For M2M devices, we have solutions like the MT6260 and MT6261, to help enable products for smart metering, fleet management, remote monitoring, and point of sale, security, and smart agriculture. Many system integrators have been successfully manufacturing and selling their products based on MediaTek M2M modules. Considering the privatization of power sector, security issues during travel, and a serious push towards cashless transaction, we do see a multi fold growth in this segment in the coming years.
Wearables: The rising market of smartphones and tablets is enabling the integration of wearable devices with the smartphones. Wrist wear segment holds the majority of the market share and is anticipated to dominate the market by 2020 as per reports. Global sales of wearables – a broad category that includes fitness bands, smartwatches and connected clothing, shoes and health gadgets – rose 67.2% in the first quarter in 2016, compared with a year earlier. So, wearables category is definitely seeing a big jump in growth, and MediaTek is ready to tap into this booming market with a range of its wearable solutions for fitness tracker, BT notification watch, calling watch, fashion watch and GPS tracker watch. Some of the recent key wearable processors include the MT2502, MT2503 and MT2601. The MT2502 (Aster) is the world’s smallest commercial System-on-Chip (SOC) for Wearables. This SOC works with MediaTek’s energy efficient Wi-Fi and GNSS companion chipsets also. This means it is now easier to create devices that connect to other smart devices or directly to cloud applications and services. Recently, MediaTek tied up with Intex to power its newly launched range of wearable device, the iRist Pro which is powered by the MT2502.
Connected Homes: There is an increasing trend towards smart home that involves connecting every imaginable electrical or electronic device, delivering smart home appliances. Smart home appliances refer to appliances that are connected to the Internet, and are capable of carrying out their functions by being remotely controlled with a smart device, or on their own. As technology advances and prices go down, smart home appliances are expected to be widely adopted on a global scale, and this is the opportune time for MediaTek to drive proliferation of the IoT market. MediaTek offers various solutions to cater to this category, like the MT7688 and MT7681. The former is Linux-based, supports 802.11n Wi-Fi connectivity and is the industry’s lowest power consumption SoC of its kind; the latter has the smallest package size, and is designed for easy embedding into small and simple home appliances such as smart lighting, door locks and plugs. Recently, we also announced availability of the MT7697 solution in India, to expand the use of IoT chips providing integration among different devices without consuming excessive power in varied applications, such as home automation, home appliances, smart gadgets, cloud connectivity, and smart homes.
At MediaTek, we believe that IoT will allow a revolution of connected devices, giving people and business’ the ability to track, manage and control their environments in a way that they never before had access to, allowing better understanding to improve their lives via better usage, performance and power efficiency. We strive to be a global operation and technology leading company, enabling customer success with our innovative products and services.
What kind of facilities you are seeking from government?
The ambitious ‘Make in India’ program by the Indian government, and the focus on the mobile segment under this initiative shall help in projecting India as a technology powerhouse in the near future. We are closely working with partners who have been actively working with governments for fulfilling key requirements towards meeting the set targets. MediaTek may not need any direct support from Government on this, rather MediaTek view is to have clear government policies towards adoption of Smart city. From government the technical requirements specifications are expected to be compiled and shared based on which MediaTek can help to support their partners to successfully meet the criteria and enable them to become part of the government projects.
Can you please tell us, Future of IoT in India?
IoT is expected to have a profound impact on the country’s economy by transforming enterprises into digital businesses and facilitating new business models thereby generating new forms of revenue. Currently, the IoT is leveraged differently across industries. The first step towards achieving IoT autonomy lies in helping enterprises to understand how IoT can enable transformation of their business and the industry. Verticals such as Utilities, industrial sectors, connected cars, healthcare and consumers are at the forefront of IoT investment. Leveraging IoT in vertical industries will definitely revolutionize the way of doing things. These changes will lead to major opportunities for providers too. While enterprises will benefit manifold, end users too will benefit since they will be utilizing the end product. Home automation will transform the way people live and conduct their daily chores and innovation will be at the heart of this. Wearables is another trend which we expect to see an upward growth in the foreseeable future.