asmag.com had a chance to talk with Mr. Niti Mekmok, CEO of Synergy Technology and President of the Thai IoT Association to hear from him about the status of IoT in Thailand and its potential in smart city and commercial projects.
The Thai Iot Association (TioT) was founded in 2018. Its origins are in a 2016 consortium that was founded to promote IoT industry in Thailand, and later became an association. The association’s objectives are to create market awareness for IoT technology, build expertise in the IoT technology through knowledge sharing and training, create a bridge between government – private sector and academia both in Thailand and overseas and to promote usability of IoT through public-private sector projects. The association has 70 corporate members that include IT, Telecom and security companies.
asmag.com had a chance to talk with Mr. Niti Mekmok, CEO of Synergy Technology and President of the Thai IoT Association to hear from him about the status of IoT in Thailand and its potential in smart city and commercial projects.
IoT awareness in the Thai market is growing. “We can look at the IoT tech business from many angles. In the past many people didn’t understand the word IoT; today the understanding of this concept is much more common. Companies understand that they can collect data and analyze it for efficiency. The IoT sensor is the basic level to create this data. Our association focuses on SI, and we try to create cross-vertical knowledge sharing and business collaboration. Sometimes IoT is not enough, and we need to add AI, creating AIoT,” explained Mr. Mekmok.
Most applications of IoT technology in Thailand are in smart city projects and in intelligent manufacturing. Smart city projects are supported by government agencies like the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (DEPA). Currently there are already 30 smart city projects running in Thailand with plans to expand to 100 cities by 2024. Smart poles combining lighting, environmental monitoring and video surveillance are one example of popular IoT devices deployed in smart cities. “I estimate that government projects make up about 60 percent of the IoT projects in Thailand. Tech advancements pushed by the government like 5G will push the adoption of IoT, in healthcare, education, security etc. In the private sector, the EEC (Eastern Economic Corridor) has a lot of Foreign Direct Investment and we set the infrastructure for the EEC to be ready to move to industry 4.0 or 5.0, focusing on robotics and automation. Thailand is crossing the threshold into an ageing society, so it needs automation. The goal of Industrial IoT (IIoT) is to improve productivity and industrial output, while offering cost savings and operational efficiency improvements,” Mr. Mekmok said.
Looking ahead, Mr. Mekmok envisions domestic development of IoT technology and emphasizes the importance of building local hardware capabilities while pushing for educational initiatives to further drive IoT innovation in Thailand. “Our weakness is that we need to import the most of the hardware from overseas (China, Taiwan, Japan). But software we can do by ourselves. I hope that in the future Thailand will be able to set up labs for students to study and practice the use of IoT. There are many project where we can push IoT forward,” he said.
Find out more about the Thailand market just by clicking here!
Product Adopted:Other