A three-year-old Internet of Things startup has become a strategic partner of Qualcomm. The achievement is significant: it is now one of only five such partners worldwide. With joint marketing alongside a global corporation now possible, the company is better positioned to tackle the global market.

Daliworks (CEO Soonho Lee) announced on the 9th that it has successfully integrated its IoT platform ‘Thingplus’ with Qualcomm’s Internet of Things (IoT) Wi-Fi solution (QCA4002). This means the two devices are compatible as if they were one — in other words, Daliworks has become a Qualcomm IoT partner.

Thingplus is a cloud-based IoT platform. It handles the entire process of sending data from IoT devices to the cloud, then organizing and presenting it elegantly. Users can see the status of their installed IoT devices at a glance on a smartphone or tablet PC, and the platform generates statistics as well. Including Daliworks, there are only five Qualcomm partners in this field. “Qualcomm spent more than three months on verification,” said CEO Soonho Lee. “Our technology has been recognized by a world-class company.”

Qualcomm bet heavily on the IoT business when it acquired Wi-Fi chipmaker Atheros in 2011. The Qualcomm ‘QCA4002’ that Daliworks integrated with is a Wi-Fi communication module for IoT. It operates on low power and helps IoT devices connect to Wi-Fi easily. It is used in home appliances such as washing machines, air conditioners, and boilers, and in home IoT products such as smart plugs and smart switches.

Through the partnership with Qualcomm, Daliworks has seized an opportunity to expand its IoT business worldwide, because joint marketing is now possible. For example, Qualcomm can introduce Daliworks’ product when supplying communication modules to IoT device manufacturers. Daliworks has become a member of the Qualcomm ‘IoT ecosystem,’ and revenue is expected as early as the new year.

Founded in 2013, Daliworks focused on overseas markets from early on. By leveraging Amazon’s cloud service, it made Thingplus available anywhere in the world — which is how an ice cream warehouse in Brazil could be managed from a small office in Chungmuro, Seoul. This year, the company demonstrated its strength by breaking into the French and Spanish IoT markets on its own, one after the other.

Daliworks also recently won the Minister of Science, ICT and Future Planning Award at the Korea ICT Innovation Awards. “We have created an opportunity to expand business with global hardware manufacturers,” said CEO Soonho Lee. “We will build linked services with global IoT manufacturers that use Qualcomm communication modules.”

by ETNews reporter Yongju Kim