The era of universal IoT and smartification has arrived. Pegatron chairman T.H. Tung attended an open forum on June 28 and shared his observations on the future trends of the AIoT industry. He pointed out that the number of IoT devices worldwide is expected to continue to grow at exponential speeds in the future. AI will ride the wave of IoT and penetrate deeply into many industries. Tung is also optimistic that the combination of AI and IoT will lower the barriers for products and services, resulting in more micro/small-scale tech startups.
Though the market seems to feel the arrival of AI with the ChatGPT frenzy, in reality, neither AI nor IoT is a particularly new trend. They've been brewing for a long time and are just booming at the appropriate moment. Besides the advancements in computing power, the trend of universal IoT is also key in driving AI development.
Tung pointed out that back in 2005, the world was entering the Internet era, but at that time, human-to-human connections (Internet of Humans; IoH) were still the mainstream. The number of IoTs was only 10% that of IoHs. However, after 2012, the number of IoTs expanded by 20 times. Fast forward to 2022, the global number of IoT has reached 26.5 billion. The pace of this development is faster than we can ever imagine, and it's expected to continue to grow at exponential speeds.
Universal IoT is precisely the foundation for AI development. Tung pointed out that in the past, data was passively accumulated via things like text imputed by humans using keyboards or images input from cameras. However, that's too slow. With everything connected, big data will come from countless sensors, meaning there will be massive amounts of data to feed the AI every day. AI and IoT are two industries that mutually benefit and complement each other.
The industry is looking forward to the new business opportunities brought by AIoT and wonders just how big the market scale will be. Regarding this, Tung admitted that it's difficult to precisely calculate just how much new profit and revenue AIoT will generate for this industry. What is certain is that AIoT application opportunities will be very widespread. It will eventually penetrate all kinds of industries, adding value and creating substantial economic benefits.
Despite that, Tung emphasized that AIoT is a hard-to-define industry. The main reason is the fragmented nature of its service scenarios. This is a challenge but it's also an opportunity. The fragmented application demand means that AIoT can be spread out and hidden in all scenarios, creating opportunities everywhere. It'll also lead to the miniaturization of services, which lowers the barriers to developing products and services. Therefore, Tung expected AIoT to stimulate the rise of micro/small-scale tech startups.
In addition to the miniaturization of services, hardware devices will also develop towards miniaturization and standardization "blocks" for AI on Chip technology.
Tung stated that we've accumulated enough mature conditions like sensors and components from the PC and smartphone industries. "Building blocks" from industries like LPWA technology and AI chips are also ready to go. In the future, it'll be up to the industries to build their software and hardware modules according to their own solution needs.
He brought up industrial PCs (IPC) and PCs as an example. Although the hardware structure of the two is 90% similar, IPCs will offer the remaining 10% for customized designs to build solutions according to the application scenario demand. This is possible due to the mature core design platforms and software-hardware modules behind the scenes. Therefore, no matter what kinds of application demand emerge in the future, as long as the "blocks" are mature, they can be very effective.
Article translated by Jack Wu
