China's meter industry will maintain growth, and competition in the market of electric meter chips will intensify

China is the world’s second largest energy consumer after the United States. During the 11th and 5th Five-Year Plan period, the Chinese government will further implement and improve such policies as "a new socialist countryside," "one household, one watch," and "power supply for all." In order to improve the nationwide distribution network, the State Grid will continue to increase the construction and renovation of the power grid and implement several major projects. According to these new policies, the domestic electricity meter market will continue to grow steadily over the next five years. In addition, in the process of urbanization in China, new housing construction will also bring new demand for electricity meters.

In the future, China's market-changing market will mainly consist of electronic meters.

In 2007, it is expected that the total number of meter installations in China will exceed 235 million, including about 200 million ordinary single-phase meters, and multi-function and multi-rate multi-phase meters will be widely installed in large industrial and commercial applications and public substations. . In the future, the Chinese form change market will mainly consist of electronic meters, among which multi-rate electronic meters will grow most rapidly.

Judging from the product life cycle, China's domestic meter market has entered a mature stage. After 2002, the annual growth rate of the meter market has slowed down, and the competition in the domestic market has become increasingly fierce. To this end, Chinese meter manufacturers have turned their attention to the international market, especially Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, but rising RMB and tightening monetary policy will become new challenges for them in 2008.

On the whole, domestic meter manufacturers have already controlled the Chinese market. Lower prices, improved quality, and relationships with local governments ensure that domestic manufacturers can get orders from local power supply bureaus. In general, international manufacturers in China are only concerned about the high-end multi-phase multi-function meters and the gateway meter market. China is already the world's largest meter manufacturing center. Currently, there are more than 500 home appliance manufacturers in China. The annual production capacity has increased to 200 million, and the electromechanical meter production capacity is facing a serious surplus. At the same time, the entire meter industry is being reorganized, and the scale of leading companies is getting bigger and bigger. Some small meter manufacturers will be expelled from the market in 2008. In addition to expanding its own brand, some Chinese companies have also begun to provide outsourced manufacturing services to major international meter manufacturers such as Itron and General Electric.

According to iSuppli's research, the total shipments of China's electricity meters in 2007 were 87 million, an increase of 7% over the previous year. Compared with a few years ago, China's major electronic meter manufacturers have very strong product design capabilities, and their multi-functional electronic meter products are gradually being recognized by foreign customers. In the coming years, Chinese companies will accelerate their expansion into international markets. Due to continuous increase in export volume, China's electricity meter output will maintain a sustained growth momentum in the next five years.

Electronic power meters usually include power supplies, power measurement cores, processing cores (microcontrollers), and other additional modules such as RTCs, LCD displays, and communication ports. ADI is currently the largest supplier of electric energy measurement chips in China, and has a 60% market share in China's electronic meter market. However, ADI is also facing huge challenges from domestic manufacturers. At the same time, austriamicrosystems, Sames, Cirrus Logic, TDK and other manufacturers are also trying to expand their market share.

NEC has always dominated the microcontroller market for electronic power meters, and the price has become the largest tool to increase market share. Integrated LCD drives and more memory units have become the main development direction of microcontrollers. As more and more manufacturers begin to select system-level chips that integrate microcontrollers and power measurement cores, future microcontroller suppliers will face more challenges. In the next five years, China's electronic meter market will create considerable revenue for international semiconductor suppliers. However, as system-level chips are widely adopted and more domestic chip suppliers actively participate, competition in this market will continue to increase.