Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision (also known as Foxconn) and France’s Actility have set up a Hong Kong-based venture, called ThingPark China, to tap China’s rapidly expanding Internet of Things (IoT) market.

The venture combines Actility’s IoT platform for connected devices with Foxconn’s massive electronics design and manufacturing capabilities, the South China Morning Post reported.

ThingPark is Actility’s end-to-end M2M and IoT service.

Actility chief executive Michael Mulica told the Post that China’s IoT market is expanding 30 per cent a year, and a third of the world’s 15 billion connected things in 2020 will be in China.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology forecasts the country’s IoT market to be valued at CNY1 trillion ($150 billion) by 2020.

Foxconn and Actility expect the venture will to be a step ahead of other IoT-related options as it supports LoRa, a low power wide area (LPWA) technology that is available today (unlike cellular-backed NB-IoT technology), the Post reported. An LPWA network is designed to support communication among IoT devices as it can transmit data over tens of kilometres while consuming much less power.

Read our recent Spotlight interview with Actility’s Mulica here.