Electronic enthusiast original Zhang Ying
2023 is a year full of changes and transformations, with artificial intelligence represented by ChatGPT accelerating digital transformation, and technological innovation and industrial transformation expanding in depth. But on the other hand, we're seeing the consumer IoT, automotive, industrial, and infrastructure sectors all experience the adverse effects of the slowdown this year, but some markets are picking up.
The external macroeconomic environment is both opportunities and challenges for the Internet of Things and the semiconductor industry, electronic enthusiasts have been conducting continuous research and questionnaire interviews with customers in the Internet of Things industry for many years.
1. Generative AI has entered the device side, and the evolution of intelligent devices has accelerated
ChatGPT and generative AI have swept the world, and the demand for IoT edge devices and edge computing power is increasing. In the past, AIoT was usually a small chip with low computing power, but with the full application of large language models like ChatGPT, it has become a new demand to deploy large LLM models that require tens to hundreds of TOPS computing power on device-side AIoT chips.
In February 2023, at the Mobile World Congress, Qualcomm's second-generation Snapdragon 8-based terminal demonstrated the world's first terminal-side demonstration running Stable Diffusion on Android phones, through Qualcomm's full-stack AI optimization of Stable Diffusion, a large Wensheng graph model with more than 1 billion parameters, can complete 20 steps of inference in 15 seconds, and output a 512*512 picture.
On October 24, Qualcomm announced the launch of the third-generation Snapdragon 8, the most powerful mobile platform to date. Hexagon NPU has a significant increase in performance, supporting large language models to generate text, large vision models to generate images, and it can support generative AI models with up to 10 billion parameters due to significant improvements in performance and energy efficiency.
At the CIIE on November 6, Qualcomm showcased the latest advances in generative AI on mobile phones. The iQOO12 series and Xiaomi 14 series powered by the third-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 mobile platform were unveiled. At the exhibition, Qualcomm showcased the Snapdragon X Elite reference design notebook. The Snapdragon X Elite is Qualcomm's most powerful PC-ready computing processor to date, enabling generative AI models with more than 13 billion parameters running on the device side.
On November 6, MediaTek officially released the Dimensity 9300 flagship 5G generative AI mobile chip, which supports up to 33 billion parameter large models, vivo has carried out in-depth cooperation based on the Dimensity 9300 chip, and achieved the first 7 billion parameter large language model on the vivo flagship mobile phone, and realized the end side operation of the 13 billion large language model.
Chipmakers like Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung, and Google have been focusing on improving the performance of NPUs and TPUs for years, while smartphone makers such as Apple, Huawei, vivo, and Xiaomi are also applying AI algorithms to devices to improve image quality, battery life, and typing experience, according to the Canalys report. In the second half of 2023, algorithms, chip companies, and terminal equipment manufacturers are trying to deploy large AI models on the device side.
2. Progress of the Internet of Vehicles: The integration of vehicles, roads and clouds has become a consensus, and the penetration of NOA functions has accelerated
In 2023, the Internet of Vehicles industry will continue to develop in depth, and in terms of standards, significant progress will be made in the research and verification of "vehicle-road-cloud" information interaction, and in terms of application, the Internet of Vehicles industry will gradually expand from technical verification to business scenarios, and the application of Internet of Vehicles will carry out in-depth innovation and practice in three aspects: empowering L2/L2+ intelligent networked vehicles, empowering high-level intelligent networked vehicles, and integrating applications of vehicles, roads, and clouds.
According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in the first half of 2023, the market penetration rate of intelligent connected passenger vehicles equipped with assisted autonomous driving systems in China reached 42.4%, and more than 15,000 kilometers of intelligent connected vehicle test roads have been opened across the country. According to the latest data from the Passenger Association, the loading rate of L2 and above assisted driving functions of new energy passenger vehicles has reached 51% in January ~ October 2023.
In April 2023, Huawei launched the ADS 2.0 intelligent driving system. Huawei ADS 2.0 will be launched in the AITO M5 Huawei high-end intelligent driving version, and AVATR 11 and ARCFOX Alpha S HI version will be upgraded to this system in the future. The latest Huawei M9 released on December 26 is also equipped with this system. The car was blindly ordered for 54,000 units before the press conference, and less than four days after its launch on the 26th, Dading has now exceeded 20,000 units.
ADS 2.0 high-end intelligent driving system, the official GOD recognition rate reached 99.9%; With a perception area of 2.5 football fields, RCR can realize functions such as autonomous cruise, intelligent lane change, obstacle avoidance, and special-shaped intersection/night/tunnel traffic in complex urban scenarios, and has the ability to realize TLC standard intersection traffic, lane change in construction scenes, lane change in the same direction, and narrow road traffic (no lane marking) on rural roads.
In July 2023, BYD released the high-end intelligent driving assistance system "Eye of the Gods". Relying on BYD's advanced electronic and electrical architecture and full-stack self-research capabilities, "Eye of the Gods" proposes a system-level solution for intelligent driving.
Intelligent driving is evolving from L2 to L2+ and L2++, and pilot assisted driving (NOA) has become the focus of the industry's layout. In the first type, urban NOA mostly uses lidar, but in the second half of 2023, pure visual urban NOA solutions are about to emerge, such as Baidu's Apollo City Driving Max, DJI's vehicle-mounted platform-9V, etc. The second is the "light map" scheme. In 2023, the market call will gradually shift from "heavy high-precision maps" to "go/light high-precision maps". Therefore, urban NOA solutions that do not rely on high-definition maps have made strong debuts, such as Huawei's ADS2.0 and Xpeng's XNGP.
3. This year, the cellular Internet of Things will reach 3 billion, and 5G RedCap will bring new growth opportunities
In November 2023, Ericsson released the latest edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report, which covers detailed forecasts for the development of cellular IoT worldwide. According to Ericsson's estimates, the number of global cellular IoT connections is expected to exceed 3 billion in 2023, of which the number of IoT devices connected via 2G and 3G is slowly declining, and broadband IoT (4G/5G) is expected to reach about 1.6 billion connections in 2023. In addition, RedCap 5G NR is expanding new possibilities for broadband IoT.
According to the Ericsson report, the massive Internet of Things (Massive IoT) technologies NB-IoT and Cat-M continue to be rolled out globally. Globally, 128 operators have deployed or commercially launched NB-IoT networks, 60 operators have launched Cat-M, and 45 operators have deployed both technologies. Broadband IoT (4G/5G) is expected to reach about 1.6 billion connections in 2023, and broadband IoT is expected to continue to connect the largest share of cellular IoT devices by 2029.
5G RedCap and its evolution is one of the most important technologies in 5G Advanced. RedCap accelerates the commercial use of the Internet of Things. The technology needs a wide range of scenarios, mainly covering consumer electronics applications such as video surveillance, smart power, smart manufacturing, and wearables.
Qualcomm launched the world's first 5G RedCap modem and RF system, the Snapdragon X35, in February 2023, and since then, chips and modules supporting 5G RedCap in the IoT market have been launched one after another. Quectel then launched the Rx255C series of lightweight 5G RedCap modules. The industry expects that more than 50 RedCap modules and terminals will be launched by the end of this year, and hundreds will reach next year. In addition, Ericsson and China Mobile have completed the end-to-network interoperability tests of a number of RedCap chips and modules with 2 major RedCap chip manufacturers and 3 module manufacturers around the world in advance.
4. 5G modules and 4G Cat-1bis have grown significantly, with the top five companies accounting for more than 60% of the global share
According to the latest market tracking and forecasts from IoT Analytics, global shipments of cellular IoT modules and their corresponding chipsets are expected to decline by approximately 18% year-over-year by 2023. Against the backdrop of this decline, shipments of connectivity technologies such as 5G and LTE Cat-1 bis have increased significantly in the global IoT module and chipset market. IoT Analytics statistics show that by the end of 2023, shipments in the 5G module segment will increase by about 65% year-on-year.
According to IoT Analytics statistics, the top five companies in 2023 in terms of cellular IoT module shipments - Quectel Communications, Fibocom, Telit Cinterion, SUNSEA and China Mobile, these five companies accounted for about 61.4% of the global market in 2023.
5. Multi-terminal coverage, China's Internet of Things operating system has changed from following to leading
In just 5 years, HarmonyOS has grown from a seed to a towering tree, and has become the third largest mobile operating system in the world. On August 4, 2023, HarmonyOS 4.0 was officially released. From the release of HarmonyOS 1.0 in July 2019 to the release of HarmonyOS 4.0 in August 2023, it took Huawei only 5 years to make the installed base of HarmonyOS system devices exceed 700 million.
HarmonyOS 4.0 three major upgrades: a new upgrade for Xiaoyi voice assistant to introduce the Pangu model, through the blessing of the large model to improve work efficiency, intelligence, practicality, and even productivity have changed greatly. Users can use Xiaoyi's voice assistant to recognize the pictures and text in their mobile phones, summarize and refine the content of the article, have more powerful search power, and even generate Weibo copywriting with one click. 2. HarmonyOS 4.0 upgrades the new Ark Engine technology, bringing six engines: graphics, multimedia, memory, scheduling, storage, and low power consumption, which can improve the performance of mobile phones by 20% and extend the battery life by 30%. 3. The new generation of HarmonyOS has added NearLink short-range wireless connection technology.
On December 9, at the 2023 Huawei Pollen Annual Meeting, Yu Chengdong, Executive Director of Huawei, CEO of Device BG, and Chairman of Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU, announced that Huawei will launch HarmonyOS native application and native experience products next year, "which will be the real king of the entire Chinese terminal operating system."
On October 26th, Xiaomi Surging OS was officially launched, Xiaomi Surging OS integrates the self-developed Xiaomi Vela system kernel with the deeply modified Linux system kernel, deeply cultivating the underlying technology, and can support 200+ processor platforms, 20+ file systems, and 200+ hardware categories. In the future, it is expected to empower Xiaomi to deeply integrate software and hardware. Furthermore. Under Xiaomi's surging OS, the company has developed its own advanced surging cross-interconnection framework, which enables mobile phones, pads, TVs, watches, speakers, cameras and other devices to dynamically network in real time to achieve cross-terminal interconnection in the whole ecosystem.
On December 28, at the Xiaomi automotive technology conference, Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, announced that Xiaomi's surging OS was officially launched, and the "whole ecology of people, cars and homes" has closed the loop since then. The advent of the HarmonyOS 4.0 system and the launch of Xiaomi's surging OS have accelerated the construction of the Internet of Things ecosystem and further opened up the growth space of industrial chain companies.
6. AI models and edge computing have brought new opportunities and challenges, and Internet of Things companies continue to merge and acquire
On August 9, 2023, Renesas Electronics announced that it will acquire Sequans, a leader in cellular IoT technology, through a tender offer. Renesas intends to incorporate Sequans' broad range of cellular connectivity products and IP into its core product portfolio, including microcontrollers, microprocessors, analog and mixed-signal front ends. The acquisition will enable Renesas to immediately expand its reach into the wide area network (WAN) market space that covers a wide range of data rates.
At the end of October, Renesas successfully obtained approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), marking the completion of their acquisition of Sequans, a French cellular IoT chip manufacturer.
On August 15, 2023, Nordic Semiconductor announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Atlazo, a U.S.-based artificial intelligence and machine science Xi company. In order to take always-on AI/machine Xi capabilities and technology to the next level to strengthen its core business and continue to expand market opportunities in line with its growth strategy, Nordic recently announced the strategic acquisition of the intellectual property portfolio of Atlazo, a cutting-edge AI/machine Xi technology company, said Svenn-Tore-Larsen, CEO of Nordic Semiconductor.
7. More Wi-Fi 6 chips have entered the market, and the penetration of Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E has accelerated
According to the latest report released by IDC Research, 3.8 billion WiFi devices are expected to be shipped in 2023, and the cumulative shipment of Wi-Fi devices will reach 42 billion units over the lifetime of the technology. In 2023, Wi-Fi 6E devices will continue to grow, with shipments reaching 473 million units. More and more Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E chips are in use.
At the beginning of September, Apple released the iPhone 15 series, and among the iPhone 15 series, the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max became the first models to support the next generation of Wi-Fi 6E connectivity. Mobile phones that support Wi-Fi 6E can reach a maximum theoretical rate of 3.6Gbps. It is reported that since 2022, Apple has added support for Wi-Fi 6E on its specific devices. The latest iPad Pro, 14-inch, 16-inch MacBook Pro, Mac mini, Mac Studio and Mac Pro all support Wi-Fi 6E.
In addition to the automotive IoT, the Industrial IoT and Consumer IoT are also becoming increasingly interconnected. Smart plugs, lamps, appliances, and other devices in smart homes will shift from Wi-Fi 4 to Wi-Fi 6 on a massive scale. Infineon, Qualcomm, MediaTek and Broadcom have all launched Wi-Fi6 chips, and the latest WiFi6 chip products from domestic manufacturers Huawei HiSilicon, Arcjet, Broadcom Integration and Espressif Technology have been listed, among which Espressif Technology's WiFi6 chip ESP32-C6 based on the RiSC-V core has been mass-produced, and the WiFi6 products integrated by Arcjet Technology and Broadcom have also been used on a variety of IoT terminals.
8. CSA launched Matter version 1.2 to help smart home interconnection
On October 23, the CSA Alliance announced the official release of Matter 1.2. Compared with version 1.1, Matter version 1.2 adds support for 9 devices, including home appliances, air conditioners, dishwashers, washing machines, robot vacuums, air purifiers, fans, carbon monoxide and smoke detection sensors, etc.
Picture: Screenshot of Matter China Developer Conference 2023 electronics enthusiasts
On November 6, CSA launched Aliro, mainly to simplify and improve the experience of using smart door locks with smartphones and wearable devices.
Aliro was founded with the support of companies such as Apple, Alongjet, Google, Infineon, NXP, Qualcomm, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Kastle Systems and Last Lock. According to CSA, the goal of the "Aliro" protocol is to create a consistent experience across validated hardware devices and promote a smart door opening experience for consumer electronics.
Aliro will be a universal communication protocol and credential that will make it easier to get a digital key for a smart lock and open a door using a wearable device or smartphone.
Su Weimin, chairman of the CSA China member group, said that Chinese manufacturers have played a great role in the promotion of Matter end products, and China's certified products account for half of the total number of certified products. By the end of October this year, Matter had certified 1,850 products and software, and downloaded the Matter standard specification more than 23,660 times.
Write at the end
In 2023, the inflection point of China's "superman" has appeared. The next decade will be the golden period for the development of the global Internet of Things, and it will likely move from 10 billion connections to 100 billion connections.
Technological advancement and application innovation have been key drivers for the development of the IoT industry. The wave of AI is coming, and intelligent terminals in the field of the Internet of Things are constantly innovating. Whether it is the evolution of chip design, connectivity standards, EDA tool innovation, or even the evolution of IoT operating systems and cloud platforms, we will continue to pay attention and bring more in-depth analysis and reports to the industry.