According to IDC, China has the fastest growing regional datasphere (the sum of new data that is created and replicated each year) and is outpacing the global Datasphere by 3% annually on average. By 2025, China will be the largest regional datasphere in the world, accounting for 27.8% of the global datasphere.
As we enter a new decade, China’s technology sector continues to innovate thanks to the development and deployment of AI and 5G, and there are considerable milestones being made in blue ocean areas.
China will play an important role in demonstrating the value of 5G as it paves the way with a continued nationwide rollout.
Last November, China officially launched the world largest 5G network, covering 50 cities and activating twelve thousand 5G base stations. According to a report from GSMA and CAICT, Chinese 5G connections will scale rapidly over time, reaching 428 million by 2025.
Thanks to ultra-high data rates, enhanced capacity and reduced latency, the wide deployment of 5G in China will greatly promote emerging applications and unlock the potential of several technologies, including autonomous vehicles, smart cities/smart homes, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and more, enhancing China’s competitive edge.
- As
China forges ahead with smart cities and smart homes, there will be
increased surveillance requirements leading to an uptick in data processing,
storage, and analytics. 5G is an enabling technology
for IoT, and as smart cities essentially rely on IoT to function, both are
inextricably linked. As such, 5G will play a critical role in allowing
information gathered through sensors to be transmitted in real time to central
monitoring locations.
According to recent statistics, China’s security industry will grow to about RMB800 billion (US$ 114 billion) in 2020 compared to more than RMB600 billion (US$85.7 billion) in 2018. The “AI Plus Surveillance” model is an important strategy for the whole industry together with the deep integration of other technologies.
Big data analytics will play an increasingly important role in the security industry thanks to the enormous amounts of data generated worldwide from surveillance and monitoring, traffic management, access control, public transportation, IoT sensors, and much more, the value of big data will be central to security industry growth.
- China
is propelling the autonomous driving sector through the adoption of next
generation technologies. China is forging a path in
the convergence of big data, 5G, AI, IoT, high-performance computing, and other
next-generation emerging technologies in the automotive
industry.
Autonomous driving will help improve transport safety, efficiency, services, and industrial development and 2020 will be a milestone year for this industry. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China expects at least 30 percent of new vehicles to feature Level 2 autonomous driving by 2020.
This supports the prediction by McKinsey & Company who say China has the potential to become the world’s largest market for autonomous vehicles and will make up more than 40 percent of new vehicle sales by 2040.
The pace of progress in China’s AV market will continue unabated in 2020. AV investment in autonomous vehicles will also go into data processing, data transmission, and data at the edge. According to Morgan Stanley, an autonomous vehicle generates 40TB data an hour and transmits about 500 times as much data as an ordinary smartphone.
- Artificial intelligence (AI) will continue to play a central role in China’s IT strategies. AI is a key component in China’s information technology strategy. According to a white paper by IDC and QbitAI, China’s AI market is expected to account for 12% of the global total in 2019, with an annual growth of 64%, making it the world’s second largest market. The paper also forecasts that the market will be US$4.25 billion by 2020, with an estimated annual growth rate of 51.5%.
- 2020
will be a breakout year of edge computing and taking China’s IT infrastructure
to a new level. 5G will have a huge impact on the
performance of mobile and remote devices, and 2020 will see edge computing gain
traction. Driven by surveillance, AV and other emerging vertical applications.
It is estimated that by 2023, more than 40% of China’s new enterprise infrastructure deployed will be at the edge rather than corporate data centres; more than a fourfold increase from today. By 2024, the number of applications at the edge will increase 700%.
