Global Smart Lighting Market Will Escalate, Reaching a Value of US$13.4 Billion in 2020, Says TrendForce

Smart lighting has been developed for years, but products and applications are not really used widely. In 2017, however, smart lighting has begun to escalate with diversification of products, continuous improvements of technology, maturing ecosystem of industry chain, and active promotion of manufacturers. According to the latest data of LEDinside, a division of TrendForce, the global smart lighting market reached a value close to US$4.6 billion in 2017 with an annual growth rate of 95%. The market size is expected to reach US$13.4 billion in 2020.

Industrial and commercial applications took a 60% share of global smart lighting market, while residential applications see the fastest growth

At present, the expansion of global smart lighting market is still led by infrastructure construction in the public places, of which the biggest market is the construction of "smart city". Thanks to the support of governments and major cities worldwide who are making every effort to promote smart city projects, the construction of smart city is expected to accelerate further in the future. Therefore, the development of smart lighting in the public domain will also be given priority.

Initiated by governments, smart lighting has been increasingly accepted in the society. Smart lighting is energy saving, convenient, and easy to control; the rise of Internet of Things also makes it necessary for companies to introduce networked lighting. Therefore, smart lighting applications grow fast in industrial and commercial lighting areas. LEDinside’s data show that industrial and commercial lighting accounted for 60% of the global smart lighting market in 2017. Moreover, digitization will bring new business models and value enhancement to these two fields.

In contrast, the number of households that actually adopt smart lighting is still limited, but with the improvement of living standards, announcement of related policies (such as smart city) and promotion of manufacturers, the application of smart lighting at homes will gradually expand. According to LEDinside, residential lighting accounted for 23% of the global smart lighting market in 2017, and the share will rise to 31% in 2020. LEDinside believes that smart home and smart lighting will promote and facilitate each other, so smart lighting will grow at the fastest pace in residential fields in the next few years.

Key manufacturers under the development of networked lighting and smart cities

In recent years, manufacturers have adopted different strategies to accelerate the transformation and upgrading. They have been giving up general lighting products with low profits, and turning to smart lighting with higher profits and better prospects. Leading companies include Philips Lighting, OSRAM, Cree, GE, LEDVANCE, LIFX, and Acuity Brands, etc. Chinese manufacturer Opple Lighting has worked on product R&D and cross-sector cooperation (such as launching smart home product suite with Huawei) to realize interconnection and interoperability between products, as well as remote control of smart end-products. Chinese manufacturers like Feilo Acoustics and Unilumin Group are also actively promoting smart street lamps. They mainly work on projects initiated by Chinese government. Taiwanese company Lite-On announced in August 2017 that it would join Stanford’s Digital Cities Program. In addition to street lights, it also develops smart-monitoring solutions, embedded cameras and telecommunication modules.