Lack of core technologies and supportive infrastructure are the key challenges facing the Internet of Things (IoT) industry, said entrepreneurs and experts on Saturday at a conference during the 2018 World IoT expo. 

While the IoT is booming in East China's Jiangsu province, self-developed core technology is still one of the most significant components of any enterprise's future.

The conference was chaired by Jiangsu Party Chief Lou Qinjian and attended by 15 businesspeople and experts to discuss better development of the IoT industry in the province.

"IoT nodes will see an exponential increase in the near future, followed by the explosive growth of data, huge energy consumption to deal with it and information security problems," said Chen Dapeng, head of the Jiangsu R&D Center for Internet of Things.

Chen said that these challenges need to be targeted by increased investment in core technology development, to which state-owned enterprises should contribute a major part.

As servers are no longer able to efficiently process the huge amount of data generated by the rapid growth of the IoT, satellites are considered by many scientists as necessary to maintain momentum. According to Li Youping, member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, satellites can handle the increasing number of nodes and provide a solution for network security problems.

The experts also call for more efforts in intelligent manufacturing and smart city construction.

"Manufacturing is kind of neglected in the current digital economy development," said Wang Jian, chairman of the Alibaba Group Technical Committee. Wang said that over 70 percent of IoT data comes from manufacturing and that Jiangsu's solid foundation in that industry will be a key driver for its IoT development.

Smart cities are another important driver, said Wang. "Today our traffic lights are not that smart in adjusting to traffic conditions. The IoT can develop further if we use it for smart city construction," said Wang.

Zhang Lei, founder of Envision Energy, talked about smart city construction and shared his experience in Singapore where he was impressed by its data collection of air quality, noise level, and traffic and crowd conditions.

Zhang, whose company plans to build an electric vehicle battery plant in Wuxi, said that the city is an ideal environment for IoT applications.

Global pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has already promoted IoT-based health care in Wuxi. AstraZeneca's global Executive Vice-president Wang Lei said that Wuxi's IoT should focus on high-end sensors.

"Some countries have the technologies to produce high-end medical sensors that can detect pollen or animal hairs. But these countries do not have an environment for IoT development as good as that in Wuxi," said Wang. Wang suggested that Wuxi should cooperate with the sensor producers.