India is poised to be leader in IoT, says Qualcomm

An increasing base of tech-savvy consumers and rising data consumption will help India take up a leading position in the Internet of Things (IoT) market, chip maker Qualcomm today said.

Qualcomm Senior VP and General Manager (Connectivity and Networking) Rahul Patel said the IoT market in India is about USD 5.6 billion with more than 200 million connected devices.

As more and more gadgets get connected to the Internet this market is expected to grow to more than 2.7 billion devices by 2020, he said citing industry reports.

"India, in my opinion, is positioned and poised to be a leader in IoT in a big way with over one billion potential customers in India, directly or indirectly. It's a tech-savvy market and huge amount of data is being consumed, data at available at affordable prices," he said.

IoT refers to a network of inter-connected sensors and devices like smartphones, connected vehicles and appliances which harness information from massive amounts of data collected.

With the use of sensors and data analytics, IoT can boost growth in sectors like agriculture, animal husbandry and logitics.

Patel said Qualcomm is working with various stakeholders for solutions across areas like WiFi, 4G/5G and IoT. The company is also developing solutions for smart homes.

He explained that one of the company's WiFi solutions can provide improved coverage and better user experience in densely populated areas.