The office mode has evolved from PC + internet to cloud + terminal. Interpersonal communication is also changing to communication between people and things, things and things. All these indicate the coming of a new era.
In this era, science and technology is becoming more people-oriented. In the beginning, technological innovations were large, expensive and very attractive. Along with the progress of science and technology, they are more invisible, tiny, and cheap. People are starting to pay more attention to meeting their needs with science and technology rather than “science and technology itself”. These characteristics have been well reflected from the development of CPUs and mobile communications: The processing capacity of a 4G base station is several orders of magnitude higher than that of the earliest base station, but the volume of the 4G base station is several orders of magnitude smaller than the earliest base station and is no longer attractive.
Features of the M-ICT Era
● Feature 1: Ubiquitous connection. By 2020, there will be more than 50 billion connections. The ubiquitous connection is formed by man-to-man, man-to-machine, man-to-information, man-to-service, and physical world to cyber world connections. Everything is connected, and everything is smart.
● Feature 2: Ubiquitous service; life and work with the same experience. The commonality of mobile smart terminals covering the consumer and business markets has gradually appeared. In both life and work, people want consistent service. With the rapid development of internet and cloud computing, cloud services are ubiquitous, and everything is reachable.
● Feature 3: Integrating the physical and cyber worlds. The cyber and physical worlds are combined technologically and economically. Consumers are eager to open the door of O2O business. The real economy lags behind the virtual economy in terms of innovation. By combining the real and virtual economies, the technological and market boundaries of the internet and ICT are greatly expanded into traditional industries, developing them in green, healthy, open and efficient directions.
● Feature 4: Attention is paid to security and privacy. Security and privacy have never received more attention than they have today. Whether national and governmental confidential information or individual location information will become a focus of attention.
From the features above and the deep understanding of the user needs, ICT can be labeled by “M”, that is M-ICT. The profound connotation of “M” includes man-man, man-machine, machine-machine, and mobile interconnections. Hence, the M-ICT era is also known as the era of mobile internet of everything (IoE).
M-ICT: Solving Key Industrial Problems
ZTE aims to be an enabler in the M-ICT era and create value with information. This is also the company’s M-ICT strategy. ZTE seeks to create more value in each link of the information flow, i.e., help customers gain more value in each link of collection, distribution, processing, storage, transmission and consumption.
ZTE has chosen the M-ICT strategy to convey its strong determination towards innovation and transformation. In the next three to six years, ZTE will spare no effort in innovating, transforming, and building core M-ICT competitiveness, and leading into the M-ICT era. The M-ICT strategy is devised to solve key industrial problems and help customers create value.
● For operators: ZTE collaborates with operators to increase their pipe capacity and make their pipes more intelligent and flexible. By understanding the role of pipes in information society and through data mining engine, the M-ICT strategy helps operators explore the multidimensional value of traffic forward, backward and acceleration operations to increase user stickiness. By using an innovative identifier network (IDN), the M-ICT strategy can expand the 4G network from public service to government-enterprise customer service and change a centralized network into a distributed network. This helps create a distributed business model, expand user base, and increase revenue. The M-ICT strategy also significantly reduces O&M costs through software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV).
● For government and enterprise customers: The M-ICT strategy provides ubiquitous IT services for governments and enterprises, reduces costs, and improves operational efficiency. It can deploy easy and secure mobile office rapidly to improve work efficiency through integrated end-to-end solutions such as micro office and super MOA. It expands internet of things (IoT) and internet of services (IoS) through machine-to-machine, man-to-machine, and machine-to-service connections. It also helps governments and enterprises optimize service flows and provide better services by building smart cities and enterprises.
● For consumers: With new smart terminals and innovative apps, the M-ICT strategy helps the consumer enjoy ubiquitous services. Life will be smarter, more comfortable, and more colorful, and this enhances consumer satisfaction from access to information, entertainment, and health care.
The core customer value proposition of the M-ICT strategy is shown in Fig. 1.
M-ICT: Leading Future Industry Trends
With emerging new technologies and accelerated industry transformation, mobile and IoE technologies are sweeping the industry. The technological and industrial trends in the M-ICT era are as follows.