China Unicom partners Telefonica to establish a joint venture(JV) firm to provide big data services in China. The JV will use “Smart Steps” technology to provide location based insights and other big data related services. The new company will have a 55/45 ownership by China Unicom and Telefónica respectively.
According to a statement by Telefonica, Smart Steps uses anonymized, aggregated and extrapolated network data, through highly automated processing and deep denoising, providing valuable location and movement insights in a fast manner. Both companies plan to apply the technology in areas such as transportation construction and operations, urban planning, tourism management, public security, financial risk control, real estate and retail analysis, business consultancy insights and macro statistics.
For Telefonica, the joint venture enables access to the tremendous potential of the big data market of China - the 2nd largest economy in the world, and for the first time extends its Smart Steps operations beyond the Telefonica global operational footprint.
