Cathy Mo

865068803@qq.com

TÜV Rheinland, a Germany-based global leader in independent testing, inspection and certification services, opened its Internet-of-Things (IoT) testing and certification center in Shenzhen’s Longhua District on Thursday.

Covering a floor space of 4,500 square meters, the Longhua project was initiated last November to meet the rising demand from an emerging IoT market in China and its surrounding areas and respond to a lack of mature business models and industry standards.

The TüV Rheinland IoT Excellence Center, the first IoT testing center in the company’s greater China region and the second of its kind worldwide (after the one in the Silicon Valley, the United States), provides one-stop testing and certification services for the electrical appliance, audio and video equipment, IT equipment, battery, lighting fixture, toy, and medical device industries. It also handles EMC testing, including short-range wireless devices such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, zigbee and Tread; long-range wireless devices such as 2G/3G/4G and 5G communication technologies; low-power wide-area networking such as Lo-Ra and SIGFOX; as well as interoperability and protocol-testing systems for wireless charging and antenna performance, according to the company’s press release.

“The Longhua center represents a milestone in TüV Rheinland’s global wireless strategy 2020,” Michael Fübi, TüV Rheinland Group’s chairman of the executive board of management, said at a press conference Thursday. “The reason for us to pour investment into the testing center is the fast speed of innovation here and that so many companies are developing IoT products here. We provide services also in other testing locations in China, like Ningbo, Shanghai and Guangzhou, but this is the most complete and most extensive single investment we have in China,” said Fübi.

Shenzhen has a complete IoT industry chain and corresponding service supporting industries.

The two communication giants, Huawei and ZTE, have driven the development of the entire communications industry in Shenzhen. At the application level of the industry, the IoT project in Shenzhen is experiencing rapid development with the most prominent applications in intelligent manufacturing, smart city, shared bicycles and unmanned retailing.

According to Shenzhen Association of Internet Application Technology, there are about 11,000 IoT and IoT-related enterprises in Shenzhen at present and their total income was estimated to reach 240 billion yuan (US$34.6 million) last year. Based on their growing pace in the first quarter of this year, the growth rate of these enterprises is expected to top 50 percent for the whole year of 2018.

“Shenzhen is the most innovative city in China and the establishment of our center is meant to catch it up with the needs of the future. We are planning to set up the second and third of its kind respectively in Taiwan and Shanghai to supplement our service network,” said Wong Yushun, president and CEO of TüV Rheinland’s China division. According to him, his company has played an important role in helping big names in the high-tech sector export their products, including those based in Shenzhen such as Huawei and ZTE, automobile manufacturer BYD and drone maker DJI.

TüV Rheinland set foot in Shenzhen in 1995 by establishing a wholly-owned subsidiary in the city and it has developed into a large-scale professional testing and certification institution, employing some 600 staff members at present.

Founded more than 145 years ago, TüV Rheinland now employs a total of 19,900 people in 60 countries and regions. It entered China in 1986 and currently its 4,000 employees are working to serve the country in the fields of industry services, automobile and transportation, energy, aerospace and aviation, services such as e-commerce, retailing, telecommunication, medical insurance, financial service, as well as products such as textiles, toys, light industry products, electronic and electrical products, medical products and solar energy products.

When asked by reporters how the company will face the challenges arising from the intense trade war between China and the United States, Wong said TüV Rheinland is a global company that serves the whole world and at the same time can benefit from its vast global network. It will not only look for opportunities in Shenzhen and other regions in China but also the whole world by tapping, for example, the Chinese local markets and the Belt and Road Initiative, to get access to more customers. He said he believes the trade tensions are only a temporary issue.

The opening of TüV Rheinland’s Longhua center is expected to greatly spur technological innovation in Shenzhen and provide key support to the city’s quality and standardization system development in sectors including intelligent manufacturing, new energy vehicles, information technology and Internet of Things, Vice Mayor of Shenzhen Wang Lixin was quoted as saying by local media when he met with the TüV Rheinland team on the same day.