Annual revenue for the global smart city technology market will jump from $97.4 billion in 2019 to $263 billion by 2028, a rise of more than 150 per cent, with cumulative revenue expected to reach almost $1.7 trillion.
This is the forecast from analyst house Navigant Research, which has counted up 443 smart-city projects in 286 cities around the world for a new report. Of these, it reckons a third (34 per cent) are focused on transforming government operation, and a fifth (20 per cent) are around transportation.
The report covers five industry sectors: smart energy, smart water, smart transportation, smart buildings, and smart government. Only one in four (24 per cent) are multi-sector deployments, covering more than single-sector solutions – the rest (76 per cent) remain single-sector applications, if not point solutions.
Navigant also calculates 14 per cent of the projects primarily focus on energy, five per cent on buildings, and three per cent on water.
Ryan Citron, senior research analyst at Navigant Research, commented: “Continued growth in smart city projects demonstrates a widespread and continued drive to put innovation at the heart of city strategies around the world. Today’s key trends show a rapid increase in IoT deployments, new partnership ecosystems, and a growing number of smart, sustainable, and digital city operations, all expected to continue driving the market forward.”
The new report, Navigant’s latest ‘smart city tracker’, covering the second quarter of 2019, provides an assessment of the state of smart city development around the globe. It divides the 433 deployments by project type, including policy initiatives, pilots and demonstrations, commercial deployments, sustainability programs, and city developments. They are also segmented by region, project type, and industry sector as well.
The report finds the smart city market is moving into a period of maturity, with a growing number of comprehensive smart city strategies and commercial projects. “Cities are continuing to achieve higher levels of integration among technology-driven city services and solutions. The past year has seen significant growth in smart city solutions that integrate data and insights across multiple operations and service sectors,” said Citron.
The report notes certain trends: connected street lights are creating new urban network platforms; smart meters are widely deployed as part of the broader transformation of urban energy systems; transport systems are being transformed through digitization, electrification, and automation; and city-wide networks are being deployed to enable urban innovation on a massive scale.
