According to TSR data, the global shipments of Cat.1 chips in 2021 reached 120 million pieces, which were rapidly applied in a variety of fields, including smart payment, sharing economy, smart watches, logistics and transportation, and video surveillance. With the withdrawal of 2G/3G networks, the applications of Cat.1 in medium-rate connection scenarios will develop faster in 2022.

Neoway took the lead in launching the industry's first single-antenna Cat.1 bis module N58 in 2019, leading the industry's applications in the Cat.1 field. Neoway successively developed the industry's smallest Cat.1 module N716 at that time, ultra-low power consumption Cat.1 module N715, and other series of products, continuously empowering intelligent upgrades for customers.

In the past 3 years, Neoway continued to study and judge the trend of the IoT industry, gain insight into customer needs, introduce new products, and constantly refresh the size limits of Cat.1 modules.

• N706, the industry's smallest Cat.1 module supporting OpenCPU, has been optimized again on the basis of N716. N706 has the dimensions of only 15.8 mm × 17.7 mm, which is suitable for terminals with high size requirements. N706 helps greatly reduce the internal space and the terminal size. At the same time, N706, which supports OpenCPU, effectively solves the problem of insufficient MCU supply and ensures stable supply.

• With the acceleration of the 2G network withdrawal process, a large number of 2G IoT users are gradually migrating to 4G or NB-IoT. For industry customers in low-to-medium-rate and mobility scenarios, N706 can well meet the needs of communications upgrades. N706 is developed based on the new Cat.1 chip platform, has more stable communications performance, and is compatible with more than 10 2G general-purpose packages. The terminal hardware can be smoothly upgraded from 2G to 4G, without the need of much modification.

• N706 supports OpenCPU, which can implement minimal development of JS scripts; N706 supports online hot updates, and firmware can be updated without the need of power-off; N706 can be developed on graphical interfaces, which is convenient and fast; IDE has many built-in prototype cases, which is more efficient for the development of related industries, such as location tracking, PoC, and voice broadcast. This helps improve terminal R&D efficiency and shorten time to market.

• N706 supports GNSS+Wi-Fi+base station positioning and other functions to implement integrated positioning, making tracking be more accurate and timely; it supports TEE TPS and high-security algorithms, making communications security be more secure; compared with the previous generation of Cat.1 products, N706 has more powerful performance, but the power consumption is reduced by 15%, which can help customers optimize costs and improve efficiency.

N706 has been applied in a variety of industry scenarios, such as IPC, tracker, electric two-wheel vehicle, smart band, sound box, and shared power bank, helping the commercialization of IoT terminals. In 2022 Q3, Neoway will provide large-scale N706 shipments, empowering the intelligent upgrades of products for industrial customers.

With the commercialization of the N706 in China market, Neoway will continue to develop a series of products based on customer needs, and make a forward-looking layout for N706 to serve customers outside China. N706 will continue to provide the most solid guarantee for stable, reliable, and secure communications in the IoT industry.