Tech Of The Towns

Hyper-connected homes are rising in Southeast Asia. For early-adopting residential markets Singapore and Thailand, smart is the new luxury

- James Crainey

Once confined to the realm of science fiction, disruptive technology advances like artificial intelligence (AI) have not only arrived but come closer to home in Southeast Asia. From Bangkok to Singapore, smart homes—dwellings equipped with lighting, heating and electronic devices that can be remotely controlled by a phone or computer—are gaining traction.

In Asia, management consultancy AT Kearney predicts the market for smart homes will hit nearly USD120 billion by 2030 or more than 25 percent of the global smart home market. This year alone, Asia-Pacific will account for 36.9 percent of global spending on the Internet of Things (IoT), the bedrock on which smart homes stand, with countries in the region in different paces of adoption.

While forward-thinking ‘Smart Nation’ Singapore remains the hotbed for IoT innovation, Thailand is catching up, with its telecommunications infrastructure, especially in narrow-band IoT (NB-IoT) systems and long-range wide-area networks (LoRaWAN), maturing in recent years. In both markets, “smart home” is as much a buzzword as it is a badge of honor.

Set to complete by 2023 on the former site of the Shunfu Ville estate acquired by Qingjian Realty Marymount) Pte Ltd for SGD638 million (USD472,000) in 2016, Jadescape won Best Smart Building Development at the PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards (Singapore) shortly after its launch last September.