In the Chinese market, which segments (such as industrial, outdoor surveying and mapping, and automotive) are currently using u-blox products? How does u-blox balance its focus on its main application areas? Is there a segment that is a top priority?
u-blox products are being widely used in China in major segments, especially in the automotive, industrial, and consumer markets.
In the automotive market, our GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) positioning modules and chips as well as Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo modules are widely used in infotainment and telematics systems. Our products for high precision positioning in particular are being integrated in ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) and L2+ AD (Autonomous/Automated Driving) solutions.
When it comes to the industrial market, we offer the whole platform from silicon-to-cloud: the location sensor in the devices, the services in the cloud, and the short range and cellular connectivity to bridge them. This is a complete wireless positioning and wireless communication offering, widely used in asset tracking for instance. We also provide high precision GNSS positioning solutions for UAVs, robotics, and precision farming. Last but not least, timing is also a market in which u-blox offers best-in-class solutions.
Wearables/sports is the key segment we address in the consumer market. The u-blox 10th GNSS technology platform further reduces power consumption, thereby extending the battery life of a wearable device. This platform is used by key customers in the wearables market.
We focus on providing a one-stop-solution to reduce customers' integration efforts and time-to-market. That's why we continually enhance our product portfolio from GNSS technology and positioning to cellular and then short range connectivity, and most recently to cloud-based services.
At the same time, we are investing in new technologies to provide leading performance and quality for the mass market, especially in autonomous driving and automated robotics.
In your view, what changes have taken place in the Chinese market in recent years, and what caused such changes?
We see changes in the market alongside the evolution of new technologies.
First, the requirement for high precision positioning systems is increasing rapidly, for the ADAS, UAVs and robotics segments. Benefiting from these technological changes is for instance the u-blox F9 high precision GNSS technology platform, which provides a low power, high precision GNSS receiver for mass market usage. The ecosystem has also evolved, since there are many RTK (Real-Time Kinematic) correction services providers, with good coverage in the Chinese market; new satellites systems offered by BDS (BeiDou Navigation Satellite System) and Galileo also provide the pre-requisite infrastructure for high precision positioning.
At the same time, the cellular LPWAN (Low-Power Wide-Area Networks) are changing the IoT ecosystem as a whole, bringing to reality long standby sensor networks and therefore reducing complexity in low power and network designs. u-blox's new LPWAN modules and chips are targeting this market successfully, recently winning designs.
In the automotive market, what products and services does u-blox provide? In order to evaluate the quality of a positioning product that targets the automotive market, what technical indicators are most important? How does u-blox perform against these key indicators?
u-blox's complete portfolio of automotive positioning and connectivity technologies encompasses a wide range of hardware, software and services. We offer for example:
- High precision positioning modules and chips with multi-GNSS and multi-band reception. The u-blox F9 GNSS platform for instance is able to track all four global GNSS constellations (BeiDou, GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo) concurrently to deliver positioning accuracy down to the centimeter-level and enable lane accuracy, thereby paving the way towards autonomous driving.
- PPP-RTK GNSS corrections services (sometimes also referred to as State Space Representation (SSR) correction services) that combine accuracy close to that of RTK (Real‑Time Kinematic) and quick initialization times with the broadcast nature of PPP (Precise Point Positioning). Our recently announced PointPerfect service is u‑blox's advanced PPP-RTK GNSS augmentation data service, designed to deliver sub-decimeter positioning accuracy with convergence within seconds. A key differentiator of PointPerfect is the innovative delivery options that are fully integrated into our easy-to-use Thingstream IoT service delivery platform, making use of the enterprise-grade MQTT messaging protocol.
- Three‑Dimensional Automotive Dead Reckoning (3D ADR) complements traditional GPS and GNSS navigation using intelligent algorithms that process distance, direction, and elevation changes made during satellite signal interruption. UDR (Untethered Dead Reckoning) refers to GNSS data fused with inertial sensor data. It is an easy-to-use and competitive solution that enables high positioning performance in places where satellite signals are poor or not available, such as urban canyons, garages, and multi‑level interchanges.
- Short range radio connectivity (Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth) also plays a role in the vehicle. For instance hands-free voice and music streaming can be achieved via Bluetooth, while Wi-Fi can facilitate an in-vehicle access point, multimedia distribution, and rear-seat-entertainment, as well as display applications such as Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and Mirror. Recently, more advanced functionality has gone mainstream, including wireless sensor data collection, over-the-air firmware updates, continuous data uploads, electric-vehicle charge controlling, and local network connectivity, for instance, in parking lots.
- Dependence on wireless data transfer will only continue to grow. As autonomous driving systems enter the market in different stages, we will see data transfer needs increase between the cars and different cloud-based systems, with similar bandwidth growth for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) connections. Vehicle-to-everything communication (V2X) is specifically handled by its own dedicated Wi-Fi-based solution (IEEE 802.11p/bd), potentially combined, in the longer run, with cellular V2X (C-V2X).
Now, the quality of a positioning product that targets the automotive market needs to answer the following pre-requisites that we at u-blox ensure are conformed with our customers' and the market's expectations:
- High precision GNSS technology for positioning and navigation, as mentioned earlier
- Low latency in the transfer of data
- Robustness
- Safety (functional)
- Security
What special requirements does autonomous driving put on the performance of GNSS modules? How does u-blox optimize and innovate its products to meet these requirements?
Certain safety critical applications such as AD L3, that use GNSS information in a safe system for geofencing or for vehicle lateral or longitudinal control, for certain architectures, require compliancy with functional safety and safety of the intended function (SOTIF), defined in ISO 21448. This implies to respect specific implementation methodologies to be compatible with the relevant ISO standards from both a hardware and software point of view together with a certain very low level of integrity risk. u-blox has made major investments and has been doing significant research in this domain.
Our automotive products are designed for equipment placed in harsh environmental conditions, where a device can be subjected to high levels of electromagnetic interference (EMI), bumps, shocks and vibrations, and temperature extremes. The quality of our automotive grade products is therefore designed to meet industry standard automotive specifications, and are qualified strictly according to ISO 16949, ISO 26262/ AEC‑Q100.
While it should be a given for any automotive supplier, we cannot also stress enough that we adhere to the long lifecycles of our customers' markets. With automotive design cycles of three to four years from concept to mass production, we offer long-term availability to our wireless and positioning components, as well as to our services. In many of our cellular and positioning products, we control the core technology via our own chip designs and therefore do not rely on life-cycle lengths of third-party suppliers.
Moreover, the automotive ecosystem is moving much faster in bringing to market highly sophisticated vehicles. The fact that u-blox can provide end-to-end positioning solutions, including measurement receivers, as well as augmentation services, reduces the effort the customers need to spend validating each component and the overall functionality, hence saving efforts and development costs.
How do you view the competition between u-blox and other international leading manufacturers of positioning products, such as Trimble? How is u-blox differentiated?
u-blox is the leader in the industrial and automotive markets because we uniquely combine a chipset and module offering. We own the whole core IP and continuously innovate in this field.
Speaking of the current global shortage of chips, has u-blox's business development been affected? What measures will u-blox take?
The component shortage is impacting the entire industry, including u-blox. We have very strong demand that is currently affected by constrained by component availability. However, thanks to our 20+ years relationships with our fabs (manufacturing plants) we also receive strong support in these times of limited availability. Additionally, thanks to a broad product portfolio we offer customers several ways to mitigate the supply shortage.
What marketing strategy will u-blox implement in China? Is there any industry or segment you are optimistic about? Will u-blox take new marketing actions in the near future?
We are very proud of our industry leading performance and quality. More than 20% of revenue is invested into R&D each year. That is to say that we take innovation at heart. We also pay extreme attention to the quality of our products. These are our key differentiators, and we also focus on markets and customers who recognize these values.
In China specifically, we have an ongoing program to share new technologies with product designers via WeChat. We believe it will help them to understand technical trends and get information about how to use u-blox solutions to design excellent products.
What is the current revenue structure of u-blox? Do you think optimization is needed? If so, what new revenue channels will u-blox try?
u-blox has a strong presence in industrial and automotive markets which together make up more than 80% of total sales. We also have a significant and growing consumer segment that makes up about 10% of total sales. We believe we have a strong presence in key growing markets, and we are always looking to expand in terms of customers and our global footprint as we have existing sales channels across the world that we are constantly expanding to support our growing customer base.
