LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE ASIA CONGRESS 2011: China will fuel Asia Pacific’s growth to become the biggest market for connected devices by 2020, according to research conducted by the GSMA and Machina Research.

The research has forecast that Asia Pacific will be the world’s biggest market for connected devices in 2020 with more than 11 billion connected devices, 5.6 billion of which will be mobile devices.

By 2020, China will be home to 5 billion connected devices – including mobile phones but also smart meters and connected cars – which will give operators in the country a revenue opportunity of US$180 billion. The Asia Pacific region will represent 47 percent of the connected devices market share globally, ahead of Europe’s 19.1 percent and North America’s 9.4 percent.

Consumers in developed nations in the region – such as Japan and South Korea – will have an average of 11 connected devices by 2020, the highest per capita in the world. Japan will have the third largest number of connected devices globally, behind China and the US.

Operators in Asia Pacific could benefit from revenues of US$447 billion, almost 50 percent more than Europe’s US$305 billion. The total revenue opportunity for mobile operators from connected devices by 2020 is estimated to be US$1.2 trillion.

The growth in connected devices in Asia Pacific will be partly driven by mobile devices being the only option for many people in the region to get online. Asia Pacific is forecast to have more than half of the world’s six billion mobile connections by the end of November 2011 with 940 million mobile connections in China alone.

The growth of connected devices beyond mobile devices fits in with the GSMA’s Connected Life vision of delivering new services to multiple devices via ubiquitous mobile broadband. “The projected rise of connected devices across the region demonstrates the enormous potential for the entire Connected Life ecosystem, with billions of new devices connected via mobile networks enabling innovative applications, services and experiences across all sectors,” GSMA chief marketing officer, Michael O’Hara, said.

“We need this whole ecosystem to unite behind a consistent standards-based approach to deliver on this opportunity,” he added in a roundtable event at Mobile Asia Congress in Hong Kong.