The most recent IDC Worldwide Semiannual Smart Cities Spending Guide expects spending on technologies that enable smart cities initiatives to reach US$30 billion in 2018 for Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ). IDC forecast the figure to reachUS$54.4 billion in 2022.
Fixed Usual Surveillance, Advanced Public Transit, Intelligent Traffic Management and Smart Outdoor Lighting use cases are seeing maximum impetus, representing more than 35% share of the overall spending in 2018 from US$25.86 billion in 2017.
During the forecast period the fastest growing use cases will be in Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Connectivity and Officer Wearables (Fitbit/smart glasses) at a five-year CAGR of 44.4% and 36.9% respectively.
"Cities in the Asia Pacific are challenged to continually deliver smart, liveable, 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," said Gerald Wang, Head of Public Sector at IDC Asia/Pacific.
"City governments need to continually analyse 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," he added.
Hardware continue to account for the highest spending with 38.1% share of the overall spending in 2018 but the trend is likely to observe a linear growth of 14.4% 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, and forecast to grow at a five-year CAGR of 18.4%. Growth 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.
Fixed Visual Surveillance will be the leading use case in China, accounting for 17.3% of China spending in 2018, mainly driven by increased demand for video information sources to track down the movement of citizens.
Investments in surveillance and facial recognition across the country will grow. 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.
“Data-Driven Public Safety and Intelligent Transportation are the two priority investments centred 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 publicized but increasingly happening in cities around the region.”
