Today's Focus: The Internet of Things Industry Enters a New Development Cycle

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■ Xie Ruolin

The era of a fully connected world is approaching. On March 31, nine departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the “Action Plan for Promoting Innovation and Development of the Internet of Things Industry (2026—2028)” (hereinafter referred to as the “Action Plan”).

The “Action Plan” sets out two clear figures: by 2028, the number of IoT terminal connections will strive to reach a hundred-billion-level scale, and the scale of the core IoT industry will surpass 3.5 trillion yuan. What is even more worth paying attention to than these numbers is a clear path indicated by policy direction—IoT is evolving from “ubiquitous connectivity” to “intelligent interconnection of all things.”

Behind this, change is underway.

Over the past decade, the keyword for IoT has been “connection.” Sensors have been rolled out, communication modules have been installed, network infrastructure has been built, and the physical world has finally reached out and shaken hands with the digital world. But at that time, terminals were essentially “dumb” probes—responsible for collecting data and passively transmitting it—while true intelligence resided in the cloud.

After more than ten years of accumulation, IoT now has the foundation to be deeply integrated with artificial intelligence. This means that in the future, terminals will no longer be merely carriers of data, but intelligent nodes capable of independent thinking and decision-making.

The clearest signal released by this policy is the deep integration of AI and the Internet of Things. The “Action Plan” explicitly proposes accelerating the deep integration of technologies such as artificial intelligence, 5G, human-computer interaction, and edge computing with IoT application terminals.

In the author’s view, between AI and the Internet of Things, it is not one-way empowerment, but a two-way journey. On the one hand, large-scale models are being lightweighted and embedded into terminal devices; capabilities such as voice interaction, visual recognition, and edge computing are rapidly sinking down to the device side at a pace you can see with the naked eye. On the other hand, IoT provides AI with real-world perception interfaces and massive application scenarios, making intelligence no longer just a cloud capability, but something that truly takes root across thousands of industries.

This is also the underlying logic behind the rise of on-device AI. AI wearable devices, embodied intelligent robots, smart connected vehicles… these tracks are entering the period right before a surge. Some institutions predict that the AI wearable market size will reach $120.7 billion by 2028; the size of the connected vehicle market is expected to surpass 2 trillion yuan by 2030. Behind these figures are multiple concentrated needs, such as consumer upgrading, industrial transformation, and modernization of social governance.

Of course, the ultimate value of IoT still needs to land in specific scenarios. The “Action Plan” provides a clear path to commercialization from three dimensions: production, consumption, and social governance.

The implementation of all these scenarios points to a shared direction: the sinking of computing power. From micro/nano sensors to edge servers, computing power is being moved down little by little from the cloud—enabling industrial manufacturing, urban management, and other scenarios to achieve a qualitative leap in response speed. This leap from “interconnection” to “autonomous coordination” is a concrete manifestation of new-quality productive forces at the micro level. The “Action Plan” puts forward a forward-looking set of “combination punches.”

In terms of the technical roadmap, it no longer focuses solely on 5G; instead, it proposes a high-low mix of 4G and 5G, and it also lays out satellite IoT, space-ground integration, and short-distance wireless communications in a forward-looking manner. The breadth and depth of network infrastructure construction have been raised by one level compared with the past.

In the spatial dimension, it is the multi-network integration of “air, space, land, and sea.” From underground pipe networks to low-altitude aircraft, and then to near-Earth orbit satellites, a seamless three-dimensional perception network is being woven. This not only helps eliminate “network blind spots” in remote areas and complex environments, but also paves the way for two major hot tracks: commercial space and the low-altitude economy.

More importantly, for a long time, the development of IoT has been constrained by the “fragmentation” problem. Ecosystems closed off by different vendors, and standards that do not match—these have always prevented scale effects. The release of the “Action Plan” is expected to break through this bottleneck, clearing obstacles for the widespread adoption of the intelligent interconnection of all things.

Looking at the spring of 2026, the IoT industry has already gone through the initial stage of concept hype and localized applications, and is entering a new cycle of scaled, intelligent, and systematic development.

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Editor: Gao Jia