Smart Water Meter Market to 2025 - Global Analysis and Forecasts by Types (Automatic Meter Reader and Advanced Metering Infrastructure); Components (Controlling Units, Display Storage & Integrated Software, and Others); and Applications (Residential, Industrial)

The Global Smart Water Meter market is expected to grow from US$ US$ 1,506.2 Mn in 2017 to US$ 3,832.0 Mn by 2025 at a CAGR of 12.4% between 2018 and 2025.

The majority of the world is facing an acute water scarcity pertaining to various factors such as illegal water tapping, pipeline tampering, and leakage. Other factors including rapid urbanization and aging infrastructure is also a key factor behind water scarcity. Water providers and water utilities are constantly adopting various technologies in order to supply adequate quantity of water to every area, along with reducing the operational costs, managing assets as well as supporting conservation. The population is growing at an exponential rate across the globe and owing to the growth rate, the demand for water is anticipated to grow certainly. With an objective to supply the required or demanded quantity of water, the water providers or utilities are upgrading their traditional water metering systems with new advanced technologies including automatic meter readers or advanced metering infrastructure.  The South America smart water meter market region is expected to witness a CAGR growth rate of 9.7% in the coming years.

Exhibit: Smart Water Meter Market by Region

Smart Water Meter Market Insights

Rise in water scarcity crisis coupled with the exploitation of water resources   

The world is facing a huge scarcity of water owing to practices such as illegal tapping, tampering of pipelines, and leakage among others. Owing to this, water scarcity is rapidly increasing in the current scenario and the issue is anticipated to increase in the near future. According to WWF (World Wildlife Fund), approximately 1.1 Bn people globally lack access to water, totaling to 2.7 Bn find water scarce. In addition to this, another major problem faced by various regions is the misuse of water which has significantly raised the demand for advanced solutions to maintain the consumption pattern from the source to destination. The substantial demand for an advanced solution has led to development and implementation of smart water meters, which are capable of monitoring the consumption pattern along with supervising and recording the leakage, theft and illegal tampering. The smart water meters are wired or wireless mechanisms, integrated with data management programs through which the user or operator are able to review/ check the consumption pattern. The technological advancements in the field of water conservation is a major progress to fight water scarcity. Subsequently, driving the growth for smart water meter market in the coming years.

Growing adoption of smart water meters owing to popularity of smart solutions     

One of the most crucial pieces of a city is its water supply system. With the increasing population, it is inevitable anticipated that the demand for water consumption will increase exponentially. A city’s water distribution channel and management systems have to be viable over a longer period of in order to maintain consistent growth and should be integrated with technologies that are capable to monitor and check water loss issues. Various developed and developing nations across the globe are witnessing a paradigm shift to smart cities. The government of various countries are adopting the momentum of smart cities thereby, investing in the development of internet infrastructure in the countries with an aim to bring robust urbanization. The US is experiencing a huge growth in numbers of cities transforming to smart cities especially focused on energy, traffic, and transportation. European countries are also emphasizing smart cities in order to enhance their infrastructures. Thus, the continuous growing popularity of smart solutions and devices across different verticals is expected to provide numerous profitable opportunities for the smart water meter market players in the coming years.

Smart Water Meter Market – Component Insight                      

In the global smart water meter market for the controlling unit by component segment, the controlling unit in a smart water meter consists of various sensors, microcontrollers, real-time clock unit and valve controllers. The flow rate sensors determines the amount of water flowing through the pipeline over a time period. The advancements in the field of sensors is increasing the capabilities of the smart water meter as a single sensor is able to collect various information, as compared to the traditional sensing systems. The microcontrollers on the other hand are integral parts of smart water meters. These microcontrollers enables the smart water meters to consume less power and deliver higher accuracy data or information to the end user or the service providers. The sensors collects the information and then transfer the data to the microcontroller which is then transmitted to the display unit. Texas Instrument introduced a microcontroller MSP430 which is integrated with ultrasonic sensing analog front end that allows the smart water meter to offer higher accuracy data. Thus, the controlling units for smart water meter is projected to provide numerous lucrative business opportunities for the market players in the forecast period.

Smart Water Meter Market – End-user Insight

For the global smart water meter market by industrial end-user, various manufacturing industries across the globe are witnessing a huge challenge in collecting the sufficient amount of water required for smooth operations. This is due to the water scarcity prevailing worldwide. Owing to this fact, these industries are tending towards implementation of smart water metering solutions. The aerospace, automotive, chemical, and construction, energy, medical and healthcare industries among others required huge quantity of water to operate on a regular basis. Attributing to the water pipeline leakage, pipeline tampering, illicit water tapping among other practices, these industries suffer from water scarcity. This fact has led these industries to opt for implementation of automatic meter readers or advanced metering infrastructures in order to monitor and control the illegal practices or pipeline leakages. The industrial end-user segment for the smart water meter market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.8% during the forecast period.

Exhibit: Smart Water Meter Market by Industrial End-user  

Smart Water Meter Market - Strategic Insights

Strategies such as acquisition, market initiative and new development was observed as the most adopted strategy in global wireless router market. Few of the recent strategies by some of the players’ operating in the Smart water meter market landscape are listed below-

2018: Itron signed an agreement with Mississippi Power which is a subsidiary of Southern Company. The agreement aims to support the grid modernization and technical innovation in the utility. Itron to arrange and manage standards-based Gen5 IPv6 network platform to attach around 193,000 advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) devices to enhance functional efficiencies and increase grid reliability for Mississippi based power customers in the southeast 23 Mississippi counties.

2018: Badger Meter has collaborated with AT&T Smart City Alliance. This collaboration aims to explore several alternatives to assist cities with varied requirements with an access to smart city water metering solutions. Merger of Badger Meter and AT&T works together to provide benefit to the water utilities from the experience in the smart water metering solutions.

2018: Sensus announced its partnership with Loudon Water (US) for providing for delivering advanced water and wastewater technologies to support the increasing community in future. Sensus will deliver Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) solution, which consist of OMNI and iPERL residential water meters, linked with FlexNet Communication Network to meet the requirement of Loudon Water.

GLOBAL SMART WATER METER MARKET SEGMENTATION

Smart Water Meter Market – By Type

• Automatic Meter Reader (AMR)
• Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI)

Smart Water Meter Market – By Component

• Controlling Units
• Display, Storage & Integrated Software
• Others

Smart Water Meter Market – By End-user

• Household
• Commercial
• Industry
• Transportation

Smart Water Meter Market – By End-user

• Residential
• Industrial

Smart Water Meter Market - By Geography

• North America
  • U.S.
  • Canada
  • Mexico
• Europe
  • France
  • Germany
  • Italy
  • Spain
  • UK
• Asia-Pacific (APAC)
  • Australia
  • China
  • India
  • Japan

• Middle East & Africa
  • Saudi Arabia
  • UAE
  • South Africa

• South America
  • Brazil

Smart Water Meter Market - Company Profiles 

• ARAD Group
• DIEHL Metering Group.
• Elster
• Kamstrup A/S
• Mueller
• Sensus
• Neptune Technologies
• Badger Meters
• Itron
• Aclara Technologies LLC