Asia’s smart-home market is expected to be worth US$115 billion by 2030, when it will account for about 30 per cent of global share, a new report forecasts.
Global management consultancy AT Kearney says China and Japan will drive much of the growth in Asia, although Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan are also expected to play a key role because of the number of high-income households in these countries as well as their high levels of data connectivity.
“Asia’s socio-economic landscape provides a great opportunity for the region to be a global driver of growth in the smart-home sector over the next few years,” says report co-author Nikolai Dobberstein, a partner at AT Kearney India.
He says Japan is already among the top five global markets for smart-home penetration and growth will continue as the country’s ageing population seeks to install smart health and wellness devices.
“The opportunity in China is even greater with a phenomenal number of households seeing increased incomes, and a strong local manufacturing and technology ecosystem.”
According to the report, the idea of the connected, intelligent home is becoming a reality in Asia because of four major shifts.
More connected
Connectedness and intelligence is the first, whereby advancements in technology and the processing power of smartphones are enabling homes to become more connected, while big data and artificial intelligence are also improving the usability of smart-home applications “drastically”.
The second shift is increasing interoperability among products from different manufacturers, which is making home applications more useful for consumers, says the report. Also, key technology components are rapidly becoming cheaper.
Finally, the report identified new monetisation models as a driver of growth, such as smart-home applications that can generate advertising revenue from their LCD monitor or connection to services.
“The smart-home market presents significant opportunities for companies across the region,” says AT Kearney Singapore partner Sridhar Narasimhan. “However, to succeed in the sector companies will need a combination of things including balancing a local and global strategy, evolving products quickly to be service-orientated, partnering with the right industry players, and coming up with a standardised way for different products to speak to each other.”
