The global digital twin market is predicted to reach $184,517.4 million by 2030, growing at a 50.0% CAGR over the forecast period. The growing acceptance of the internet of things (IoT), 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) technologies across industries, increasing penetration of Industry 4.0 standards, and rising demand for cloud services are some of the key drivers driving the market growth.
In the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 began to spread around the world, and the government of various countries implemented strict measures, such as lockdowns, resulting in hampered technological development, as companies started to focus on financial and operational stability. Owing to these measures and limited operations, the market for digital twins was negatively affected.
The digital twin market has been categorized into product design & development, performance monitoring, predictive maintenance, inventory management, business optimization, and others, based on application. During the projected period, the predictive maintenance category is expected to grow at the highest rate. Businesses can gather real-time information, automate operations, estimate downtime, and schedule maintenance by making a digital duplicate of a product, system, or process. As a result, the need for digital twin solutions is likely to rise in the future in order to achieve operational efficiency through predictive maintenance.
The market has been divided into manufacturing, automotive, oil & gas, energy & utilities, aerospace & defense, healthcare, and others, based on industry. The manufacturing category generated the highest revenue in the market in 2020. This can be credited to the expanding acceptance of Industry 4.0 standards in the manufacturing industry, as well as the increasing penetration of industrial internet of things (IIoT) platforms.
The digital twin market is expected to register the highest CAGR in Asia-Pacific (APAC) during the forecast period. This can be attributed to the growing economy, increasing investments in IT infrastructure, rising adoption of new technologies, and surging government and private initiatives for the deployment of the IoT and AI technologies to improve product quality and minimize production time. For instance, in 2019, Asian Paints Ltd., an India-based manufacturer of decorative paints, varnishes, enamel paints, and black & synthetic resins, adopted Sight Machine Inc.’s solution to transform its plant data into a digital twin of the entire production process, in order to identify and quantify contention cases and bottlenecks.
Players in the digital twin market have been involved in product launches in order to hold a significant position.
For instance, in October 2019, Bentley Systems Incorporated announced the launch of iTwin services, which are digital twin cloud services, for infrastructure projects and assets. These services are provided within the company’s connected data environment (CDE) for the users of ProjectWise (document management software) and AssetWise (asset information management software).
The major players operating in the market include General Electric Company, Siemens AG, Microsoft Corporation, Oracle Corporation, PTC Inc., Ansys Inc., IBM Corporation, Robert Bosch GmbH, Honeywell International Inc., XenonStack Pvt. Ltd., and Wipro Limited.