Rubbish is taken out of a smart home – Newspaper Kommersant No. 49 (7494) of 03/23/2023

A conflict has unfolded between participants in the lighting market around smart homes. Thus, the Association of Manufacturers of LEDs and Systems based on them (APSS) asks the ministries to include its representatives in ANO “Smart MKD”, which is now developing digitalization standards for high-rise buildings together with regulators. The APSS fears that ANO participants will prescribe the rules “for themselves”, complicating the access of competitors to this market segment. There is something to fight for, experts agree: in the coming years, the segment expects serious growth.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the letter of the head of the APSS (unites 68 participants in the lighting market) Olga Grekova to the head of the Ministry of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev dated March 21. Ms. Grekova expresses concern that the market for smart home devices may be monopolized by a narrow circle of companies.

The document says that in July 2022, market participants established ANO Smart MKD, which, together with regulators, is developing uniform standards for housing digitalization in Russia. But Olga Grekova emphasizes that participants of the APSS are not allowed to the process. She asks the Ministry of Digital Development “to assist in the signing of agreements and the formalization of relations between ANO “Smart MKD” and APSS.” Grekova clarified to Kommersant that she had sent letters to the Ministry of Digital Development, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Construction.

Now among the founders of ANO “Smart MKD” there is only one manufacturer of lighting equipment with a limited range, says Ms. Grekova, and he “can form industry standards for his own products, which will lead to the monopolization of this market segment.”

ANO Smart MKD, according to its own data, includes telecom operators (MTS, ER-Telecom, Rostelecom), developers (Samolet, Etalon), electronics developer Yadro, lighting manufacturer LLC TPK Varton (20% for Ilya Sivtsev and 80% for Svetlana Novoseltseva), etc. Since last year, ANOs, together with the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Ministry of Construction, have been developing the concept of digitalization of apartment buildings, which involves the development of regulations to regulate the market, as well as the creation a unified range of smart home devices.

Thus, the authorities expect to stimulate demand for Russian devices in this segment. The Ministry of Digital Development estimated the cost of equipping about 90 thousand homes with smart devices at more than 350 billion rubles. for two and a half years (see Kommersant dated July 4, 2022).

“APSS has been repeatedly invited to work together, including on the concept of digitalization of apartment buildings in the Russian Federation, but there have been no travel offers from representatives of the association,” says Nikita Utkin, general director of ANO Smart MKD. “Among the founders and partners of our organization, and the interdepartmental working group also includes all the key representatives of the Russian lighting market, and their proposals were accepted when developing the concept.” Among the founders, only “Warton” was found. However, according to Mr. Utkin, ANO is “in dialogue with Lighting Technologies, Boos Lighting Group and others.”

The Ministry of Digital Development and the Ministry of Construction did not respond to requests. The Ministry of Industry and Trade has not yet received a letter, but they do not see the risk of a monopolization of the segment in the development of standards, since the document is undergoing public discussions: “Any organization is able to influence the content of the final document.”

A Kommersant source in the IT market explains that the standardization of systems in apartment buildings is needed so that developers use compatible solutions during the construction of MKD. This, according to him, is, for example, about uniform principles – both at the level of a single system architecture, infrastructure requirements, placement of lighting equipment, and its technical characteristics, the form factor of lamps.

According to the Lighting Business Consulting Group of Companies, at the end of 2021, the volume of the professional lighting market (including b2b and b2g lighting) in the Russian Federation amounted to 92.7 billion rubles. in money (up 31% yoy) and 80 million in units (up 14.8% yoy).

The volume of the market for lighting control system elements at the moment is only about 2-3% of the lighting market of the b2b and b2g segments, but it is an “important part of automated building management systems,” says Sergey Mordavchenkov, COO of TPK Varton: “We expect that in the next few years, the share of the segment will grow to 15–20%.”

Nikita Korolev