Cover of the China Annual IoT Development Report (2016-2017). [Photo/ silkroad.news.cn]

China's major economic information provider, China Economic Information Service (CEIS) released the China Annual IoT Development Report (2016-2017) in Wuxi on September 1. Releasing an annual report is one of the major events for the World Internet of Things Exposition 2017 (WIoT 2017), the largest exposition of its kind in China, which is scheduled to be held in Wuxi from September 10 to 13. 

According to the report, global IoT technology and application have been highly active since 2016, with rising IoT innovation, application and integration. China has initially established systematic competitive advantage in IoT, and is entering a new stage of "key breakthrough, systematic innovation, crossover integration and collaborative development".

The annual report, the seventh of its kind released by CEIS since 2011, outlines some new features and trends of IoT development as follows:

First, global IoT technology and application have been highly active and are quickening the pace into the era of Internet of Everything (IOE). Developed countries and regions like the U.S., Europe, Japan and South Korea are continuously strengthening IoT strategy deployment, with global IoT technology and application unprecedentedly active, application scenarios constantly enriched, multinational companies vying for entering IoT field, open source ecology construction accelerated and industrial scale constantly expanding. 

China's IoT market has been growing by an annual rate of over 20 percent for years on. The market value exceeded 900 billion yuan in 2016 and is expected to exceed 1.5 trillion yuan by 2020. 

Second, China's "13th Five-Year" IoT roadmap has been rolled out and NB-IoT has been upgraded to a national strategy. The Information Communication Industry Development Plan-IoT (2016-2020), released early this year, has become a guiding document for the development of China's IoT industry in the coming five years.