Analyst Insight: Smart Meters in Asia Pacific

Asia Pacific is a hotbed of current and future smart meter opportunities. Among all global regions, Asia Pacific reports the highest number of installed meters, buoyed by high volume deployments in China, Japan, and South Korea and ambitious, forward-looking installation targets across several other regional markets.

This Asian Pacific market is highly fragmented, with multiple massive markets having completed their first-generation smart meter rollouts (China, Japan, South Korea), while others are characterized by relative nascency and high growth potential. For example, India has maintained lofty smart meter ambitions for over a decade; however, widespread uptake and adoption has only been realized over the past 1-2 years. Other emerging markets with huge potential for growth include Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, among others.

Project drivers in Asia Pacific tend to vary according to a country’s level of economic development. In Japan and South Korea, for example, objectives tend to be more advanced (e.g., grid flexibility, customer engagement), while many Southeast Asian markets (e.g., India) have focused their near-term efforts on theft detection and simpler use cases. Project-level information on these deployments can be found in the accompanying Global AMI Tracker 2Q23.