Gemalto Provides eSIM Tech for Chinese Internet Car

Gemalto has teamed up with Banma, a new joint venture from Alibaba and SAIC Motor Corporation, to help develop China’s first “Internet Car”, according to an announcement from the company.

Banma’s Roewe RX5 is a smart car sporting some sophisticated features, including in-car voice command, road alert notifications, and a Bluetooth-enabled virtual key. Its digital infrastructure runs on Alibaba’s YunOS operating system, and it is able to establish M2M cellular connections via Gemalto’s Machine Identification Module, a remote SIM provisioning system adhering to GSMA standards.

With Forbes having called China’s the biggest car market in the world, the Banma collaboration represents a potentially significant stake of marketshare for Gemalto as the company seeks to build its presence as an eSIM and remote provisioning solutions provider in the IoT market more generally. And with automakers around the world increasingly interested in smart car technologies, as demonstrated at this year’s CES, there may be many more such opportunities for Gemalto to come.