The global market for smart electricity meters has achieved 10% in 2014 after a brief market slowdown in 2013, according to the latest market update from IHS Inc.
The global market shares have shifted away from dominant Western suppliers and toward Asian suppliers, IHS says, as the Asian market expanded and the European and American markets grew more slowly than expected.
North America experienced a decline in smart meter shipments in 2013, which – along with continued delays to the rollouts expected in Europe – dampened global growth to about 5%. According to IHS, the largest Western suppliers, which tend to focus on the higher-margin markets of North America and Europe, lost market share in 2014.
‘Although some Western suppliers are quite active in other developing markets in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia, the demand for smart meters is generally much lower there,’ says Jacob Pereira, smart utilities infrastructure analyst for IHS.
Chinese state-run utilities continued their rapid replacement of outdated basic electromechanical meters in 2014, and other countries expanded their communicating meter capabilities, which led to higher growth rates.
