Key smart city tech to generate $62bn in revenue

Metering.com 19 JANUARY 2018

Revenue generation from 12 key smart city technologies and verticals will increase from $25 billion in 2017 to $62 billion in 2026 says a new report by ABI Research.

ABI Research further forecasts the market will witness 11% growth during the forecast period.

Dominique Bonte, vice president at ABI Research, said: “Interest in and focus on smart cities has skyrocketed in 2017, with a very large number of vendors from across the value chain repositioning and optimising their IoT portfolios to take advantage of this beckoning opportunity.

“By its very nature of aggregating a wide range of solutions and technologies, the smart cities segment offers the perfect environment for suppliers to offer horizontal IoT platform solutions and addresses a recent trend toward more holistic, cross vertical approaches.”

Smart city technologies

ABI Research forecasts a lion’s share of revenue to be generated from smart meter and video surveillance technologies.

The fastest growing sectors will include electric vehicle charging, microgrids, smart waste management and environmental sensors, smart parking and smart street lighting.

In its latest report Smart City Market Data, ABI Research says the majority of IoT technology companies are shifting their focus to smart cities. However, companies offering technologies addressing challenges which cities are facing will prosper.

The research firm says cities are considering technologies which are flexible, extensible and offered ‘as-a-service’ and which offer standards-based interoperability.

“When considering IoT revenue categories, the largest rewards can be reaped from the higher levels of the value chain, including applications and services, analytics and AI, and security.

“Connectivity, sensor and device management, as well as professional services, represent decreasing opportunities against a background of increasing platformisation and commoditisation,” a statement by the research company says.

Some of the key smart city IoT solutions identified by ABI Research include Cisco’s Kinetic for Cities, Microsoft’s CityNext, Huawei’s OceanConnect, Nokia’s Impact, Siemens’ MindSphere, IBM’s Watson IoT, SAP’s Leonardo and Amazon’s AWS IoT platform.

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