Quectel Wireless, a supplier of cellular and GNSS positioning modules, has joined the IoT M2M Council (IMC) to gain access to its 25,000 rank-and-file membership of IoT buyers.

The IMC is the world’s largest community of qualified enterprise users and product makers that buy IoT products. Shanghai-based Quectel joined the trade group to provide thought leadership and generate leads.

Especially during the pandemic, the IMC’s online events have proven to be a crucial platform for keeping technology adopters abreast of the latest the IoT sector has to offer.

Dominikus Hierl, Quectel’s senior vice president of sales in Emea, will sit on the IMC’s board of governors.

“Quectel provides modules for the broadest possible range of networks, from low-power wide-area for low bandwidth applications to 5G and automotive,” said Hierl. “Of course, that means our modules are deployed in a broad range of applications. The IMC is a good fit for us because its membership covers 27 different vertical markets, everything from automotive manufacturing to medical devices to retail point of sale.”

Current plans call for the IMC to produce its own set of three multi-day, online conferences in 2021, as well as an industrial IoT conference in conjunction with Hannover Messe, all in addition to its just-completed conference exclusive to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). These two initiatives cover engagement with the world’s largest manufacturing and consumer products events, respectively. IMC events are unique in that typically 70% of those attending identify as IoT buyers who will actually deploy technology, which is a far larger proportion than the industry average.

“We welcome Quectel to our conference programmes,” said Kim Bybjerg, head of European operations at Tata Communications and the IMC’s chairman, “Our events were always best-in-class in terms of audience quality, but now we find we’re getting much larger numbers. Despite a lot of competition, our CES conference in mid-January drew 1200 people.”

The IMC is the largest trade group dedicated to the global IoT and M2M sector. Board sustainer companies include 1NCE, Aeris, AVSystem, BeamLive, BICS, Digi International, Fractus Antenna, HPE, iBasis, IoT Launch, Kore, Losant, Microsoft Azure IoT, MultiTech, NimbeLink, Pod Group, Quectel, Software AG, Somos, Taoglas, Tata Communications, Telit, U-Blox and Vodafone.