This report provides Transforma Insights’ view on the Water Smart Meters IoT market. The transition from traditional water meters to smart water meters is a global IoT initiative for water conservation and hygiene. Transforma Insights estimates that by 2035, 908 million smart water meters will be deployed. The key driver behind the increase in their installation is water scarcity due to increasing consumption, water loss, and leakage. Mostly driven by government mandates, developed nations have made major strides in the deployment of water smart meters to achieve water resilience and efficiency. Other reasons include the ability to monitor and diagnose domestic, commercial, and industrial water consumption patterns as well as track costs with respect to resource utilisation.
The report provides a detailed definition of the sector, analysis of market development and profiles of the key vendors in the space. It also provides a summary of the current status of adoption, including a detailed assessment of the progress of rollouts, and Transforma Insights’ ten-year forecasts for the market. The forecasts include analysis of the number of IoT connections by geography, the technologies used (including splits by 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, LPWA, short range, satellite and others), as well as the revenue split between module, value-added connectivity and services. A full set of forecast data, including country-level forecasts, sector break-downs and public/private network splits, is available through the IoT Forecast tool.
The report examines key factors that are influencing the development of the market, including:
This section of the report first talks about the major challenge of water loss (with the US alone wasting around 900 billion gallons per year) and then explains how smart meters use flow and pressure sensors to detect leaks and abnormal consumption, helping utilities and consumers quickly identify and address water losses, including hidden leaks.
This section begins with an explanation of how the increasing global population has increased the demand for water across various verticals such as agriculture, domestic households, and industries. It then discusses how smart water meters have witnessed significant demand in regions such as the Middle East and Africa that face water crises, either due to extreme climatic conditions or because of a higher population density.
It also talks about how these meters can monitor and diagnose domestic, commercial, and industrial water consumption patterns and track costs with respect to resource utilisation, which will propel their demand. It then charts some geographical locations that have witnessed widespread deployment of smart water meters (such as Palo Alto and Long Beach in California).
This section of the report first notes the high cost associated with large-scale rollouts of smart water metering systems, since they typically involve significant upfront investment in acquiring, installing, and integrating smart meters and communications infrastructure. It then adds that due to these high upfront costs, deployments require significant initial financing (typically through taxes, tariffs, or borrowing), with consumers sometimes contributing indirectly through higher bills or connection charges. This can be even more challenging for less affluent countries or regions.
This section discusses the various communication technologies used in the highly fragmented smart water market, including LPWA technologies such as NB-IoT and LoRaWAN, and the reasons behind their adoption. For instance, many smart water meters naturally run on LPWA technologies since they only generate a small amount of traffic. It also talks about some particular cases, where Short Range technologies or mesh technologies are deployed.
In a tabular format, this section also describes the connectivity technologies used across various geographies, including Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Moldova, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, the UK, and the US. For instance, in some areas of Tokyo, LTE has been used by the Waterworks Bureau for conducting transmission tests in collaboration with Softbank as a trial, before using it for smart water meters. Before this, in 2016, in the initial trial phase, the local water department had deployed water meters using M-Bus technology across 200 properties in Japan.
This section of the report focuses on the lack of government initiatives regarding the deployment of smart water meters. It further talks about the general public resentment about their deployment, especially in countries like South Africa, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and a few Southeast Asian markets (mainly due to poor understanding and unclear definitions about them).
It then observes that most regulation around water smart meters focuses on encouraging behavioural changes related to water conservation, which indirectly introduces smart water meters. It also adds that various governments and authorities have introduced fines or penalties for wasting water on both consumers and utilities. For instance, India’s Central Ground Water Authority has announced an INR100,00034 (USD1,113) fine and five years of imprisonment for wastage or misuse of groundwater in the country.
In a tabular format, the report then discusses water smart meter rollouts across key geographies, including Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mozambique, New Zealand, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, the UAE, the UK, Uruguay, the US, Uzbekistan, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. For instance, in China, Beijing Water Group had installed over 3.3 million smart water meters by March 2023, covering more than 50% of the market. Moreover, Shanghai Municipal Water Authority had installed 2.04 million smart water meters in 2022, with a plan to install a further 4.58 million by 2025.
This section also provides some examples of relevant IoT deployments in this application, like a local utility in Australia deploying Adeunis IoT sensors with LoRaWAN network for smart water meters.
The key vendors section lists some of the main providers of products and services related to the market, such as Landis+Gyr, Itron, Badger Meter, Diehl Metering, Neptune Technology Group (Roper Technologies), Xylem Inc. (Sensus), Kamstrup, Aclara, and Siemens. The report provides profiles of the various vendors, including aspects most relevant to this Application Group, such as product offerings, pricing, financial results, and technology.
In the market forecasts section, we provide a summary of the forecasts from the Transforma Insights IoT Forecast Database:
The report charts the growth in the number of devices, which will grow from 414 million in 2025 to 908 million in 2035.
Transforma Insights forecasts are compiled on a country-by-country basis. This report includes a regional summary, showing splits between Australasia, Greater China, North America, Europe, Japan, Latin America, MENA, Russia & Central Asia, South East Asia, South Korea, India & South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Transforma Insights’ IoT forecasts include splits between the various connectivity technologies as follows: 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G mMTC, 5G non-mMTC, LPWA (non-mMTC), Satellite, Short Range, and Other.
This section discusses which technologies will be used in the water smart meters application group.
This part of the report discusses the market growth in terms of revenue (module revenue, service wrap revenue, and VAC revenue). Transforma Insights estimates that the revenue in the Water Smart Meters Application Group will grow at a CAGR of 10%.
