Recently, the State Administration for Market Regulation (Standardization Administration of China) released the latest batch of national standard announcements, which include the series of national standards for the 'NearLink Wireless Communication System' (GB/T 48336.101—2026, etc.). These standards will be officially implemented on April 1, 2027.
It has taken NearLink six years to carve out a native Chinese route from the fragmented short-range communication landscape characterized by 'multiple standards from different countries' to being officially accepted by the national technical specification system. However, obtaining the 'national standard ID card' is only the first half of this marathon.
A 'National Business Card'
To understand NearLink , one must return to its starting point.
In May 2019, the United States added Huawei to the 'Entity List,' and international organizations such as the Bluetooth SIG and the Wi-Fi Alliance successively suspended Huawei's membership. Although these alliances quickly restored its qualifications, the experience of being 'expelled in the morning and reinstated by evening' made China's communication industry realize: a pass granted by others can be revoked at any time. It was precisely under this sense of crisis that the NearLink Alliance was established in September 2020, with enterprises covering multiple fields such as chips and terminals, including Huawei, ZTE, China Mobile, BAIC, and Lenovo, all joining the initiative.
Although the functions of NearLink are similar to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, its capabilities far exceed the sum of 'Wi-Fi + Bluetooth.' In the NearLink technology system, the low-power SLE benchmarks against Bluetooth, the high-bandwidth SLB benchmarks against Wi-Fi, the high-precision positioning SLP benchmarks against UWB, and SLZ is similar to Near Field Communication (NFC). NearLink 's 'one standard, multiple modes' technology system solves the pain points of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Zeng Guosong, Secretary-General of the International NearLink Alliance, previously stated that wireless short-range communication has developed for more than thirty years, and the 'multiple standards from different countries' and fragmented device interoperability are old problems. Entering the era of AI (Artificial Intelligence), the number of terminals is growing exponentially, posing new requirements for latency, reliability, concurrency, and synchronization. NearLink reconstructs the underlying layer with a unified technology system.
As of now, the NearLink Alliance has reached 1,264 member units and has cumulatively released 91 group standards; the cumulative shipment of NearLink chips has exceeded 380 million units; after digital car keys are installed in vehicles in 2025, the cumulative installation volume is expected to exceed 1.5 million units by August 2026, with GAC Toyota, GAC Trumpchi, and Dongfeng Mengshi already implementing the technology.
This batch of released GB/T 48336 series standards covers the overall architecture, access layer, basic service layer, and basic application layer. For example, in the access layer: Parts 201 to 203 specify the air interface technology and equipment testing methods for the two major access interfaces of Synchronous Low Latency Broadband (SLB) and Synchronous Low Energy (SLE); in the basic service layer, Part 304 establishes specifications for the coordinated integration of NearLink and 5G cellular networks.
In the list of drafting units, besides Huawei and HiSilicon, enterprises such as China Unicom, ZTE, OPPO, Lianfa Bodong, Changan Automobile, Chongqing University, CTWing, Goke Microelectronics, and Sylincom Technology are included, indicating that the industrial chain is accelerating its momentum.
Yang Guang, Chief Analyst at Omdia, stated that becoming a national standard will help NearLink technology be more widely adopted in the domestic market and accepted by more people in various industries. Although it is currently only a national recommended standard, its significance remains substantial.
The Major Test of Implementation Has Just Begun
From group standards to national standards, NearLink's stage is larger, but GB/T is not a mandatory standard—the state's recognition of this technology route does not mean that all terminals must be equipped with it. In the consumer electronics market, the power of standards ultimately needs to be realized through chip costs, ecosystem scale, and user experience. The implementation of the national standard marks the beginning of NearLink's true major test.
Cost is the first hurdle. Currently, the unit price of NearLink chips is about CNY 15, nearly double that of traditional Bluetooth chips. This price difference is enough to deter mid-to-low-end device manufacturers. For NearLink to truly approach the price curve of Bluetooth, it still requires a dual ramp-up in both capacity and process.
Ecological shortcomings are equally obvious. An insufficient number of ecological devices and the need to improve the maturity of the industrial chain remain core issues: SLP high-precision positioning is mainly applied in non-mobile phone scenarios such as remote controls and in-vehicle systems; NearLink's integration into vehicles is still concentrated in mid-to-high-end models, and whether international mainstream automakers will accept it remains unknown.
Regarding the pace of implementation, Qian Manli, General Manager of Zhongke Jingshang Information Technology Co., Ltd., once stated: the current industrial promotion is still 'stuck at the chip stage.' The company is focusing on tackling the high-bandwidth SLB chips, and the new generation of chips based on NearLink 2.0 is expected to be officially launched in early 2027.
Challenges and opportunities coexist. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi have dominated near-field communication for decades. From group standards to national standards, NearLink has obtained the ticket for direct competition. Although it is impossible to replace them in the short term, in the long run, the landscape is loosening.
Where are the opportunities for NearLink? Yang Guang stated that in the era of the Internet of Everything, the demand potential for short-range, low-power wireless communication technologies is huge, and NearLink has broad space. Current applications are being comprehensively rolled out around the four major directions of 'humans, vehicles, homes, and industrial manufacturing.' At the same time, under the sweeping wave of AI (Artificial Intelligence), embodied intelligence and humanoid robots will become new tracks for NearLink to focus on exploring. Compared to humans, intelligent agents require more deterministic instructions, which is exactly where NearLink 's highly reliable connections can be applied.
Next, the industry can focus on three things.
First, who are the first batch of non-Huawei customers? If industrial equipment manufacturers and the commercial vehicle sector place orders with substantial funds, NearLink will truly move from an 'accessory protocol' to a 'near-field foundation.'
Second, how will the '5G cellular network integration' in the national standard develop, and can the collaborative model of '5G for wide-area, NearLink for near-field' be applied at scale?
Third, by the end of 2027, will non-Huawei Android flagships integrate NearLink into the main controller of mobile phones? Bluetooth has won for decades because it is in every mobile phone. For NearLink to truly end the 'multiple standards from different countries,' it must ultimately pass the mobile phone test.
Conclusion
Zeng Guosong revealed that, according to the plan, the shipment target for NearLink chips in 2026 is 200 million units, and shipments are expected to double in 2027. By 2030, the chip shipment target is at least 1 billion units. Opportunities outweigh challenges. What is more worth questioning is, among those 1 billion chips in 2030, what proportion will be the SLB high-bandwidth mode? How much will be contributed by non-Huawei mobile phones? And how much will be contributed by industrial and automotive scenarios?
Yang Guang stated that currently, the overall industrial scale and ecosystem of NearLink still have a relatively large gap compared to technologies such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. As a next step, on the one hand, the industry needs to continue expanding the domestic market size and space to attract more enterprises and ecological partners to participate; on the other hand, it can take the opportunity of Chinese enterprises going global on a large scale to push NearLink into the international market, promote its development from a national standard to an international standard, and further promote it within the scope of Belt and Road countries.
Editor/Layout: Zhu Wenfeng
Proofreader: Mei Yaxin
Supervisor: Liu Qicheng