Skip to main content

Smart City Investments will Reach $135 Billion in 2021

Around the globe, metropolitan and suburban municipalities continue to explore digital transformation projects. Emerging technology spending for Smart City applications is forecast to reach $80 billion in 2018, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

IDC has provided a detailed look at the technology investments associated with a range of Smart City priorities and use cases. As these initiatives gain traction, IDC expects spending to accelerate over the 2016-2021 forecast period, growing to $135 billion in 2021.

Smart City Market Development

"Smart Cities have recently evolved from a collection of discrete flagship projects to a sizeable market opportunity that will drive significant technology investments in 2018 and beyond," said Serena Da Rold, program manager at IDC.

IDC believes that strategic priorities  will drive digital transformation across cities of all sizes, but the analyst's research demonstrates there can be significant differences in the focus of investments across regions.

Smart Cities attain digital transformation in an urban ecosystem to meet environmental, financial, and social outcomes. A Smart City is developed when multiple initiatives are coordinated to leverage investments, use common IT platforms to decrease service time or costs and share data across systems.

Smart City programs enabled by emerging technologies are accelerated in the city ecosystem to deliver innovative solutions. The strategic priorities that will see the most investment in 2018 are intelligent transportation, data-driven public safety, and resilient energy.

Intelligent traffic and transit and fixed visual surveillance are the two significant use cases, in terms of worldwide spending, followed by smart outdoor lighting and environmental monitoring.

While these use cases attract considerable investments in most geographies, the focus shifts across different regions. Intelligent traffic and transit will be the top priority in investment terms in the United States, Japan, and Western Europe.

Fixed visual surveillance will be the leading use case in China and the second largest in the United States, while environmental monitoring will be relatively more important in Japan.

Outlook for Smart City Regional Growth

On a geographic basis, the United States will be the largest market for Smart City technologies with spending forecast to reach $22 billion in 2018. China will be a close second with 2018 spending expected to be nearly $21 billion.

The two countries will share a similar growth trajectory with five-year compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) of 19 percent and 19.3 percent, respectively. The regions that will see the fastest spending growth are Latin America (28.7 percent CAGR) and Canada (22.5 percent CAGR).

Popular posts from this blog

AI Semiconductor Revenue will Reach $119.4B

The Chief Information Officer (CIO) and/or the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) will guide Generative AI initiatives within the large enterprise C-Suite. They may already have the technical expertise and experience to understand the capabilities and limitations of Gen AI. They also have the authority and budget to make the necessary investments in infrastructure and talent to support Gen AI initiatives. Enterprise AI infrastructure is proven to be expensive to build, operate and maintain. That's why public cloud service provider solutions are often used for new AI use cases. AI Semiconductor Market Development Semiconductors designed to execute Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads will represent a $53.4 billion revenue opportunity for the global semiconductor industry in 2023, an increase of 20.9 percent from 2022, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. "The developments in generative AI and the increasing use of a wide range AI-based applications in data c

Demand for Quantum Computing as a Service

The enterprise demand for quantum computing is still in its early stages, growing slowly. As the technology becomes more usable, we may see demand evolve beyond scientific applications. The global quantum computing market is forecast to grow from $1.1 billion in 2022 to $7.6 billion in 2027, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). That's a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 48.1 percent. The forecast includes base Quantum Computing as a Service, as well as enabling and adjacent Quantum Computing as a Service. However, this updated forecast is considerably lower than IDC's previous quantum computing forecast, which was published in 2021, due to lower demand globally. Quantum Computing Market Development In the interim, customer spend for quantum computing has been negatively impacted by several factors, including: slower than expected advances in quantum hardware development, which have delayed potential return on inve

Industrial Cloud Computing Apps Gain Momentum

In the manufacturing industry, cloud computing can help leaders improve their production efficiency by providing them with real-time data about their operations. This has gained the attention of the C-suite. Total forecast Industrial Cloud platform revenue in manufacturing will surpass $300 billion by 2033 with a CAGR of 22.57 percent, driven by solution providers enhancing platform interoperability while expanding partner ecosystems for application development. ABI Research found the cloud computing manufacturing market will grow over the next decade due to the adoption of new architectural frameworks that enhance data extraction and interoperability for manufacturers looking to maximize utility from their data. Industrial Cloud Computing Market Development "Historically, manufacturers have built out their infrastructure to include expensive data housing in the form of on-premises servers. The large initial upfront cost of purchasing, setting up, and maintaining these servers is