A BOE employee performs a test on a smart fridge equipped with a display panel at a facility in Ordos, Inner Mongolia autonomous region. [Photo/XINHUA]

BOE Technology Group Co Ltd, a Chinese supplier of display products and solutions, is accelerating its efforts in the internet of things sector.

The company's expertise in displays, sensors and system components will be applied to fields like transportation, vehicle-mounted system, security, education and telecommunication, BOE Technology said.

The company will continue to consolidate its dominant position in semiconductor displays and "aims to build an integrated industrial platform that ranges from display panels, modules, machine manufacturing to services," said Chen Yanshun, chairman of BOE, at the company's Innovation Partner Conference 2020 on Wednesday in Beijing.

Chen noted the company plans to launch 10 to 15 innovation centers across the nation, which will concentrate on the combination of software and hardware technologies, new material and equipment, display products and service, as well as exchange and training of internal talent.

The bigger goal is to expand BOE's presence in intelligent finance, retail, healthcare, the internet of vehicles, industrial internet and smart cities.

"We are positioning BOE as an IoT company providing intelligent interface products and professional services for information interaction and human health," Chen said, noting despite challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic this year, the company's smart system innovation business grew by more than 300 percent on a yearly basis.

"We will integrate our accumulated technologies in the field of semiconductor display, sensor, system device, intelligent manufacturing capability with artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing to build systematic and complete solutions," Chen said.

Liu Xiaodong, president of BOE, said the company sticks to independent innovation and its investment in research and development reached 8.75 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) in the first three quarters of this year, up 30 percent year-on-year.

The total revenue of BOE surpassed 100 billion yuan in the first nine months of the year, up nearly 20 percent year-on-year, Liu said.

He also said BOE has forged comprehensive cooperation with more than 500 partners around the world to jointly build an IoT ecosystem that integrates software and hardware technologies. In addition, BOE will grasp the opportunities arising from digitalization and increase its investment in the smart IoT business.

According to a report from market consultancy IDC, competition in the IoT space is set to intensify in China, especially with the increased adoption and proliferation of 5G technologies. By 2022, the country is expected to spend $300 billion annually on IoT and surpass the United States as the world's largest IoT market.

Nick Jones, research vice-president at Gartner, said: "The IoT will continue to deliver new opportunities for digital business innovation for the next decade, many of which will be enabled by new or improved technologies.

"By 2023, we expect to see the deployment of hardware and software combinations that together create more trustworthy and secure IoT systems."