Arm and China Unicom Sign Partnership Agreement to Drive IoT Adoption in China

Collaboration brings together Arm Pelion Device Management, Arm Mbed OS and China Unicom IoT Platform

CAMBRIDGE, UK – February 26, 2019 – Arm and China Unicom today announced a long-term partnership agreement to deliver IoT scalability, security and simplicity to Chinese enterprises and global companies looking to have a local presence in China. The collaboration will provide a flexible, high performance and secure solution by leveraging Arm® Pelion™ Device Management, Arm Mbed™ OS, China Unicom’s new IoT platform and a rich device and application ecosystem.

“We are very pleased to reach the partnership with Arm, together to provide the fast-expanding market with a better, safer IoT solution," said Chen Xiaotian, General Manager of China Unicom IoT Limited, “China Unicom IoT has made efforts to be the driver of the IoT era. Facing the ever-increasing number of devices, we believe that our collaborations with Arm will help our clients to efficiently grow their businesses, provide better service experiences and earn higher investment return. Furthermore, we will build the whole IoT ecosystem together, facilitating IoT upgrades and service transformation.”

The China Unicom IoT Platform brings a robust “edge-to-cloud” ecosystem, and securely connects 100 million devices across China. The solution provides device-to-data security and device management by building on top of Arm's Pelion Device Management service that can manage any device type and being tightly integrated with Mbed OS. Through the Arm and China Unicom partnership, Chinese enterprises and foreign companies operating in China will be able to easily deploy and manage IoT applications at scale across verticals, including smart utility, smart cities, smart logistics and more.

“IoT presents a significant opportunity for enterprises, but requires solutions that are easy to implement, secure and can manage devices over their entire lifecycle,“ said Dipesh Patel, president, IoT Services Group, Arm. “With China Unicom licensing Pelion Device Management and using Mbed OS, we are together bringing tremendous scale and simplicity in enabling the secure development and management of IoT devices so that enterprises can obtain value from their deployments.”

Pelion Device Management allows organizations to securely and efficiently onboard, manage and update various types of IoT devices (from ultra-constrained to large gateways), throughout the device lifecycle. Pelion Device Management also provides enterprises with the flexibility to deploy in the public or private cloud, on-prem or in hybrid environments.

Mbed OS integrates all the essential components and mainstream standards necessary in the IoT, providing rich types of connectivity functions. The next release of Mbed OS (March 2019) will be one of the first IoT OS’s to have out-of-the-box compliance with PSA Certified™ Level 1 and PSA functional API Certification with support for multiple semiconductor vendor hardware, including Cypress, Nuvoton, NXP® Semiconductors and ST. Mbed OS brings security from the edge and protocols to the whole lifecycle. It will help developers enhance development efficiency, shorten development time, as well as focus on innovation and differentiation of their IoT products.

“The IoT market in China continues to grow at a rapid pace, with cellular IoT connections growing from 560 million in 2018 to 1.5 billion by 2022,” said Sam Lucero, senior principal analyst, IoT, IHS Markit. “This growth presents a tremendous opportunity for partnerships, like this one between Arm and China Unicom, to bring new solutions to market that attempt to address the need for simple and secure enterprise deployment and management of IoT devices.”

About Arm

Arm technology is at the heart of a computing and connectivity revolution that is transforming the way people live and businesses operate. Our advanced, energy-efficient processor designs have enabled intelligent computing in more than 130 billion chips. More than 70% of the world’s population are using Arm technology, which is securely powering products from the sensor to the smartphone to the supercomputer. This technology combined with our IoT software and end-to-end connectivity, device and data management platform enables customers to derive real business value from their connected devices and data. Together with our 1,000+ technology partners we are at the forefront of designing, securing and managing all areas of compute from the chip to the cloud.

All information is provided "as is" and without warranty or representation. This document may be shared freely, attributed and unmodified. Arm is a registered trademark of Arm Limited (or its subsidiaries). All brands or product names are the property of their respective holders. © 1995-2018 Arm Group.

About China Unicom

China United Network Communications Group Co. Ltd. (“China Unicom”) established in January 2009 with the merger of former China Netcom and former China Unicom. China Unicom, ranked in Fortune Global 500, is the only Chinese telecom operator listed in the stock exchanges of New York, Hong Kong and Shanghai (HKSE: 0762, NYSE: CHU, SHA: 600050).

With a modern communication network characterized by nationwide coverage and extensive global reach, China Unicom operates fixed and mobile communication services (WCDMA, LTE, FDD, TD-LTE), domestic and international communications facilities, satellite service, network access service, value-added and system integration services.

China Unicom has subsidiaries in 31 provinces in China and overseas operations in around 15 countries and regions.

About China Unicom IoT

China Unicom IoT Co., Ltd. (CUIOT), a wholly owned subsidiary of China Unicom (CU), is regarded as a main operation unit of the beyond-connectivity business (applications, modules and devices, etc.) and as a unified platform for China Unicom IoT external business cooperation and venture cooperation.

CUIOT mainly focuses on product development, support, operation，sales，etc, and aims to cultivate professional and integrated business capacity so as to acquire quick market-respond.

CUIOT is also responsible for the unified planning, construction and maintenance management of IOT platform. By conducting the "IoT platform +" ecological strategy, CUIOT seeks to become as a global leading IoT service provider.