Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing company of the Alibaba Group, is expanding its partnership with a global company that makes sensors that connect to the cloud and enable real-time communication of data and analytics.
Headquartered in California, Semtech Corporation supplies high-performance analog and mixed-signal semiconductors and advanced algorithms for industrial markets and has pioneered LoRa devices and wireless radio frequency technology (LoRa Technology).
Alibaba Cloud has introduced the first LoRa-based Airship Balloon, which connected sensors from 20 meters underground to 40,000 meters above ground.
Alibaba said the expanded partnership announced at the Alibaba Cloud Conference in September 2018 will see both companies working together toward the wider adoption of Semtech’s LoRa devices and the LoRa technology in China.
The joint effort seek to establish the radio spectrum for the rapid growth of IoT solutions for multiple vertical markets and new use cases in China, including logistics tracking, air quality, food safety compliance, and smoke detecting safety.
“As one of the leading enterprise members of the LoRa Alliance, Alibaba Cloud continuously promotes the progress and popularization of LoRa Technology in China as well as globally,” said Wei Wu, Director of Ecological Cooperation, Alibaba Cloud IoT, in a media statement.
Currently, he said the technology provides a complete set of low-power, wide area network solutions for key industries in China including smart meters, smart cities, smart manufacturing, smart agriculture and other fields.
Marc Pegulu, Vice President and General Manager of Semtech’s Wireless and Sensing Products Group, said LoRa will be the enabler of low power connected devices.
“Our collaboration with Alibaba Cloud strengthens LoRa to become a core technology for the IoT industry. The abundant amount of low power IoT use cases emerging in China leveraging Semtech’s LoRa Technology will position the platform as the de facto IoT solution, and we anticipate Alibaba will be one of the industry leaders as it strengthens its ecosystem of IoT partners in China,” he said.
LoRa's IoT vertical applications are growing from agriculture to healthcare to smart cities to supply chain and logistics, according to SemTech.
The LoRa Alliance, a non-profit association of more than 500 member companies committed to enabling large scale deployment of Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) IoT, is also gaining more global support.
A GSMA report released in July 2018, “How Greater China Is Set To Lead The Global Industrial IoT,” quoted statistics from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that the industrial IoT market in China is growing by about 25 percent per annum and is set to reach almost CNY 300 billion (US$47 billion) in 2018.
The report noted that key sectors that will be driving industrial IoT in the country are utilities and energy, logistics, and smart cities.
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