Asia Pacific’s Smart City initiatives to reach US$30 bln
Cities in the Asia Pacific are challenged to continually deliver smart, livable, and sustainable urban ecosystems by harnessing technology innovations and widespread collaborations.
SINGAPORE: The latest update of the IDC Worldwide Semiannual Smart Cities Spending Guide expects spending on technologies that enable Smart Cities initiatives to reach a value amounting to US$ 30 billion in 2018 for Asia/ Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ).
In a recent statement, IDC said, as these initiatives gain traction, spendings will continue to accelerate over the 2017 to 2022 forecast period, reaching US$ 54.4 billion in 2022.
“Cities in the Asia Pacific are challenged to continually deliver smart, livable, and sustainable urban ecosystems by harnessing technology innovations and widespread collaborations.
“This also requires clarity around implementation policies that are focused on the building and financing of city infrastructures as well as new city digital services in the long-term,” shared IDC Asia/ Pacific head of Public Sector Gerald Wang.
He added, “City governments need to continually analyze the impact of rapid advances in technologies on city transformation goals and create outcome-based metrics for future smart city investments. This approach requires a rethink of the way governments traditionally procure for technologies and innovative solutions.”
According to IDC, Fixed Usual Surveillance, Advanced Public Transit, Intelligent Traffic Management and Smart Outdoor Lighting use cases are seeing maximum impetus, representing more than 35 per cent share of the overall
Gerald Wang, IDC Asia/Pacific head of Public Sector
spending in 2018 from US$ 25.86 Billion in 2017.
However, it noted that over the forecast period (2017 to 2022), fastest growing use cases will be in Vehicle to Everything ( V2X) Connectivity and Officer Wearables ( Fitbit/smart glasses) use cases at a five-year compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 44.4 per cent and 36.9 per cent respectively.
Aside from that, it pointed out that hardware is expected to continue to account for the highest spending with 38.1 per cent share of the overall spending in 2018 but the trend is likely to observe a linear growth of 14.4 per cent over a five-year CAGR, thus reaching US$ 19.4 billion by 2022.
“Services is the second largest technology spend at US$ 8.9 billion, followed by software and connectivity in 2018.
“Over the forecast period (2017 to 2022), services is expected to grow the fastest at a five-year CAGR of 18.4 per cent.
“The growth in services and hardware will be mostly driven by state/ local government segment, with the maximum usage of fixed visual surveillance and smart outdoor lighting use cases. These use cases attract considerable investment across the region,” it added.
Specifically, it noted that fixed visual surveillance would be the leading use case in China, accounting for 17.3 per cent of China spending in 2018.
“This is due to the increasing demand for video information sources to track down the movement of citizens. Consequently, huge investment is expected in surveillance and facial recognition coverage across the country.
“China has deployed around 20 million security cameras, facilitated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to locate and track criminals China will complete building its facial recognition and surveillance network nationwide, attaining nearly overall surveillance of urban residents including their homes through smartphones and smart TVs by 2020,” it explained.
“Data-Driven Public Safety and Intelligent Transportation are the two priority investments centered around the region in response to growing urban population,” said Malini Swamy, Market analyst at IDC Asia/Pacific.
“However, we are also finding significant spending and growth in platform related and smart lighting related use cases, which are less often publicised but increasingly happening in cities around the region,” Malini added.
IDC’s Worldwide Semiannual Smart Cities Spending Guide quantifies the expected technology opportunity around smart cities initiatives from a region and worldwide level.