Colley Hwang, CEO of Digitimes at the conference in Taipei; Photo by Conor Stuart

The Internet of Things (IoT) promises to help industries and individuals alike reduce both labor and risk, but this necessitates creative use of the data provided by devices. As automation increases, some of the workings of this will be invisible to us, while other changes will be more obvious. In fact, IoT technology is already making inroads into our lives often unseen, from the food we eat, to how we get from A to B and how we communicate with the people and things around us.

With increasing accessibility to low-power wide-area IoT networks, such as Sigfox, and with devices being able to upload data from as little as NT$2 (US$0.07), with very little power usage, this opens up the possibility of connecting a whole range of offline devices across a whole range of industries, as well as expanding the capabilities of existing technology and thereby creating new services. The managing director of Sigfox’s Taiwanese partner UnaBiz, Philippe Chiu, stated that Sigfox has recently signed a deal with Taiwan Mobile to provide IoT connectivity services. Devices on the Sigfox network can run for five or six years using only the power of two AA batteries, according to Chiu, whereas networks that exploit wifi connections use a lot more power.

At a recent conference in Taiwan, CEO of Digitimes Colley Hwang spoke of a range of case uses around the world and in Taiwan specifically. The most notable of these was the introduction of the ETC system for Taiwan’s major roads, enabling electronic payment of tolls, which has been a great success despite initial teething problems. He also mentioned that IoT technology could be extremely useful for bike-sharing services like Obike, particularly now the company’s bikes are to be subject to towing if parked in the wrong place, the company would need the bikes to have GPS positioning technology, independent of the GPS on the users’ phones.

Given that Taiwan’s birth rate is now one of the lowest in Asia, behind only Macao and Singapore, Hwang stated that elderly care will also be a major application for IoT technology, from tracking technology for elderly people who wander off, to self-driving cars which make use of sensor data and IoT connections to transport elderly people from A to B. It can also be used in controlling both vehicle and foot traffic. Chen Yi-yan, the CEO of WeatherRisk Explore Inc., who featured in a panel at the conference, stated that his company’s technology, which is able to give extremely precise weather predictions using a range of connected sensors, has a wide range of applications, from wedding day setting to farming, film shoots and natural disaster prediction. He even stated that he’d been hired by a male underwear brand who were interested in holding an outdoor promotional event featuring male underwear models and wanted help setting the date. Weather prediction may also be increasingly important in the context of the global warming crisis and with Taiwan’s power shortages over recent years as the country moves away from nuclear power.

Taiwan has significant demand for the expanded services that IoT connectivity can provide, from agriculture to elderly care, manufacturing, cold chain monitoring, construction and pest activity. Taiwan can also use its advantages in certain industries to provide IoT solutions to other countries, particularly in light of Taiwan’s attempt to improve its relationship with countries in Southeast Asia as part of its New Southbound Policy. However, if it wants to do this, it may have to move fast, as its neighbors in the region may already be beating it to the punch, according to Environmental Management Technologies Inc general manager Davis Hsu. Japanese companies, such as Fujitsu and Mitsubishi are offering software, hardware and cloud services to agricultural companies in Taiwan at extremely low prices. The only condition to this exchange is that the farmers provide the data to the companies and allow them to provide it to farmers in Southeast Asia. The Taiwanese market itself is not the primary target of the companies, but rather it hopes to be in a position to provide services to farmers in the ASEAN region, allowing them to use Taiwan’s local expertise to compete with Taiwan in the region.

Taiwan may not be able to compete on the same scale as Microsoft or Google, said Hwang, however, what Taiwanese firms can do is provide that which those companies are unable or unwilling to provide. He advised niche thinking, rather than trying to emulate what others are doing.

Author: Conor Stuart Current Post: Senior Editor, IP Observer Education: MA Taiwanese Literature, National Taiwan University BA Chinese and Spanish, Leeds University, UK Experience: Translator/Editor, Want China Times Editor, Erenlai Magazine

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