Is Smart Street Lamp Really A Market That Does Not Make Money?

In the context of smart city construction, 5G is officially put into commercial use, and urban public infrastructure is gradually becoming intelligent and digital. Smart street light is an important entrance to smart city construction. According to relevant research institutions, the global market size of smart street light will exceed 16 billion yuan in 2022, and the market size of China will exceed 4 billion yuan.

But when it comes to smart street lamps, there doesn't seem to be much market -- "At present, most smart street lamps are not profitable."

Is smart street lamp really a market that does not make money?

For now, yes!

In recent years, the artificial intelligence industry has developed rapidly, and the crazy actions of investors have driven the prosperity of AI.

Intelligent street lamp, on the other hand, is a not good sell industry, for the development of intelligent street lamp, the development direction of enterprise is not unified, and involves the high integration of the other industries: wisdom in a street lamp, with LED lights, the WiFi module, environmental monitoring, monitoring camera, display, alarm, radio column, chargers and other equipment.

Although these devices may not seem to have many advantages, lighthouses have become the most extensive "platform" for smart cities.

With the advent of the IoT era, autonomous driving, 2K / 4K monitoring, environmental detection and other industries have entered a period of rapid development. How to deploy all kinds of equipment as far as possible in the front end has become the core problem. If the construction of base stations alone is not enough to support the huge number of iot devices, the street lamps, which are scattered all over the road, are the only alternative -- or, more specifically, the lampstands.

Light racks are not a difficult or high-tech device to build, but in the IoT era, light racks have what companies are most concerned about: quantity and power.

Based on these two features, the equipment provider can install all kinds of equipment on the lamp holder: base station, environment awareness, monitoring, edge computing server and other equipment. The effective combination of such equipment will provide the most comprehensive data for the city manager.

It should be noted that the combination of smart city development with finance and policy, and the comprehensive layout of smart city through street lamps, cannot be completed in a short period of time. Therefore, most smart street lamp providers choose to "enclosure land" first -- once they win the street lamp project, they will have certain advantages in the future when they need to transform.

However, it should not be ignored that even though there has been a good development trend, smart street lamp has not entered a period of rapid development.

Due to the short development time of the smart light pole industry, most of them are in the pilot demonstration stage, and the industry lacks unified quality standards, resulting in uneven product quality. Although the smart light pole industry is at the forefront of the industry, it is difficult for most enterprises to carry out large-scale promotion due to the lack of relevant policies and industry standards, unclear market demand and unclear profit model.

The total scale of the industry continued to expand

Although not popular, but wisdom lamp pole industry is worthy of the blue ocean market. According to the incomplete statistics of bid-winning information of caizhaopeng, Electric power bid-winning network and local bid-winning network, there were 28 bid-winning projects of smart light poles in 2018, with a total scale of 353 million yuan. In 2019, smart light poles began to increase in quantity, winning 174 projects with a total scale of 5.90 billion yuan, up 1370% year on year. In 2020, smart light poles continued to grow rapidly, winning 207 projects with a total scale of 17.225 billion yuan, up 231.89% year on year.

Who will be the master of the future?

Smart street lamps have become a powerful new engine for smart city development. In the field of smart street lamps, there are relatively few enterprises in this field because the actual profit is not high. Think twice, Huati Technology, 3000 wisdom, Zhuming technology, Mingshuo technology, energy saving crystal and lighting, qin on photoelectric, Samsung lighting, Huapu Yongming, Yaming lighting and other street lamp enterprises layout wisdom street lamp.

But it is worth noting that although there are relatively few companies in this field at present, some tech giants are actively engaged in it -- such as Huawei.

As we all know, Huawei, as a giant in the field of communication, has developed a comprehensive layout based on communication, especially in smart city. In Huawei's business, government and enterprise have always been the key layout of Huawei. When Huawei actively participates in the construction of urban government-enterprise platforms, it has already realized the top-level design of smart city, and smart light poles are only part of it.

With the growth of the industry, the number of smart light pole enterprises with actual products and able to implement projects has grown from 5 in 2015 to 40-50 now, and the number of enterprises has increased by more than 60% in the past three years.

There are various types of enterprises and different development modes. At present, there are mainly the following types of enterprises entering the field of smart light poles: street lamp enterprises, lamp pole enterprises, control system enterprises and communication enterprises. Various related enterprises in the ecological chain actively cross the boundary and share the dividend of the development of smart light poles. In the future, the smart light pole field may attract enterprises from more fields to cross the boundary, with more diversified enterprise types, such as display screen enterprises and charging pile enterprises.

However, with the establishment of industry norms and standards, the concentration degree in the industry will become higher and higher eventually, some enterprises without core competitiveness will be eliminated, and the number of enterprises will decrease. The main market share of smart light pole construction may be held by a few enterprises, such as China Tower, Huawei and other large enterprises.

However, as far as the current development is concerned, the smart street lamp has not entered the Red Sea era, but is in the blue sea -- and the blue sea stage will remain longer.

According to the China Internet Development Report (2021), The scale of China's AI industry has grown significantly with the wide application of next-generation information technologies such as the Internet of Things and cloud computing. At the same time, in the application scenarios of 5G, cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things and other fields vigorously promoted by the country, the deep integration of smart street lighting and AI technology will provide new momentum for the industrial upgrading of digital cities.