The global market for Smart Meters is expected to reach US$29.9 billion by the year 2027, trailing a post COVID-19 CAGR of 6.5% over the analysis period 2020 to 2027. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of strong environment & social governance to avoid future climate induced disease outbreak & human crisis. Sourcing, distributing and consuming precious commodities like water, gas and electricity have a significant impact on the environment. Smart meters provide an intelligent platform for monitoring, measuring and managing distribution and consumption of these resources. Smart meters improve resource conservation, help utilities reduce administrative costs and consumers save money. The resources conserved help the world to be better prepared for increased demand from population and industrial growth. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant disruptions to the smart meters supply chain. Import and export of raw materials has been impacted considerably. While the year 2020 presents a negative trend for smart meters market, there is likely to be marginal recovery in 2021. Due to the pandemic, utilities have temporarily halted the installations of smart meters. The need to prevent spread of the virus and the implementation of social distancing measures, lockdowns and travel restrictions have led companies to put on hold all field works related to smart meters. In addition several policy changes have been adopted by utilities and companies to deal with the crisis. This includes stopping service shut offs in case of non-payment, suspension of fees for customers who do not permit utility workers to enter their premises, waiving late fees for customers, closing customer service centers, and halting audit visits for residences and businesses.

Energy and water utilities are also prioritizing business operations, whereby resources are being allocated only for essential field service operations that are needed for ensuring service continuity to customers. Measures for controlling people movement such as lockdowns have hampered the installation of new smart meters across the world. In addition, utilities are conserving cash to maintain operations and capital equipment spending, including for smart meter installation, has declined thus affecting installation of new smart meters. While smart meter installations have been delayed in order to ensure compliance with government regulations, utilities that have already commenced smart meter installations are likely to re-start installations on ease up of government restrictions. This is likely to result in a decline in shipments of smart meters, with smart electricity meters likely to record significant fall in shipments compared to smart water and smart gas meters. Declines are extensive in Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America. In China, which accounts for a significant share of overall smart meter shipments, there has been a slowdown in shipments especially for smart electricity meters that have already reached high penetration rates of up to 90% among households by 2019. With utilities likely to target households in rural and semi-urban areas, the pace of rollouts could slow down for smart electricity meters in China.

The COVID-19 outbreak has also led to revenue declines in smart meters market due to price erosion and, with widespread availability of low-cost meters likely to further impact OEM revenues. As utilities focus on resuming installations of smart meters in the second half of 2020, there will be some recovery for the market in 2021. Despite the delays, the cumulative shipments of smart meters will continue to grow, with roll outs of smart meters being undertaken to comply with completion targets set, especially in European countries. In several European countries, utilities are obligated to deploy smart meters for electricity and gas, or else face fines or penalties for delays. This is likely to ensure faster recovery of the smart meters market. With the COVID-19 pandemic amplifying the challenges in creating new revenue streams for utilities, the demand will rise for smart metering software and services for improving utility finances. In the post COVID-19 period, utilities are likely to invest more into add on software analytics for driving greater returns from their investments. For instance, the use of analytics on smart meter data for isolation and eliminating outages will enable efficient prioritization of maintenance workforce, thus reducing potential exposure of employees to virus. In the post COVID-19 period, smart meters will continue to replace conventional meters and leading to notable transition towards digital technologies. Smart meters rely on reliable and secure cellular connectivity for transmission of information to utilities. Cellular technology provides uninterrupted and effective connectivity to help utilities in connecting to smart meters. The launch of NB-IoT and LTE-M technologies is expected to further extend the deployment of smart meters to various areas. While high cost of smart meters is a major challenge, ongoing advances are anticipated to make the technology more affordable and drive adoption rates. In the coming years, smart meters are expected to drastically transform service delivery and help companies in enhancing consumer experience. The technology is likely to be exploited by companies for developing innovative business models on the basis of data offered by these devices.