Kyocera Corporation has announced that its subsidiary, Kyocera Communication Systems, is now set to begin providing Internet of Things (IoT) network services in Japan, which is based on the Sigfox global IoT network. According to the announcement, the service is now available in Tokyo, Kawasaki City, Yokohama City and Osaka City, with further expansions planned for all of Japan’s 36 major cities by early 2018 and nationwide by 2020.
The IoT market continues to grow worldwide with the number of connected devices estimated by some analysts to reach around 50 billion by 2020. There are still significant barriers to mass adoption for use in many locations with no electric power source. This is especially a problem for applications like sensors with extremely low data volumes. In order to address those issues, Kyocera has set out to deploy the Sigfox Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) network across Japan, citing the solution’s low cost and long battery life, both of which are barriers to entry for many companies in Japan seeking to leverage mass IoT, the company said.
This partnership marks the first availability of the Sigfox network in the fast-growing Japanese market, which is the third largest IoT market in the world behind the U.S. and China.
Kyocera has formed partnerships with around 70 companies from various fields such as device makers and IoT service providers. The Sigfox network will target the following IoT services and applications in Japan:
- Utilities: Remote meter reading and water leakage detection
- Retail: Remote monitoring for vending machine repair and restocking
- Environmental: Monitoring for temperature, precipitation, wind and river levels
- Logistics & Transportation: Container, pallet and chassis location information management
- Assets: Tracking and tracing rental equipment in case of loss or theft
- Medical: mHealth applications such as data collection and monitoring, and monitoring of the elderly, children and pets
- Agricultural: Monitoring of greenhouse temperature and humidity, soil condition monitoring and machinery management
Edited by
Alicia Young
