Singapore to boost Asia's smart home market

Growth in the region is expected to reach US$115m in 2030.

Singapore, amongst other highly-connected economies, will play a vital role in boosting Asia's smart home market, which is expected to reach US$115m in 2030.

This would account for 30% of the global share, according to global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney.

The firm said the global smart home market to grow to US$50b by 2020 and surge to US$400b by 2030, from US$15b currently. More so, it noted that the growth in Asia will be driven by China and Japan, with highly-connected economies such as Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan also playing a key role.

“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. While the smartphone market is peaking out, the smart home market is becoming the next promising market,” A.T. Kearney partner and Asia-Pacific head of communications, media and technology Nikolai Dobberstein said.

He furthered, “Japan, which is already among the top five global markets in terms of smart home penetration, will see continued growth driven by an ageing population enticing households to install health and wellness solutions. The opportunity in China is even greater with a phenomenal number of households seeing increased incomes, and a strong local manufacturing and technology ecosystem. Meanwhile, South-Korea, Taiwan and Singapore are all expected to have high penetration of smart homes given the large proportion of high-income households and the data connectivity in these economies."

The firm also noted that the idea of the connected, intelligent home is becoming a reality in Asia due to four major shifts that are accelerating market expansion. These four shifts include connectedness & intelligence, interoperability, product availability and cost, and new monetization models.

“The smart home market presents significant opportunities for companies across the region. However, to succeed in the sector companies will require 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 standardized way for different products to speak to each other. The first players to successfully launch this last requirement will achieve a decisive advantage," A.T. Kearney Singapore partner Sridhar Narasimhan said