2H 2020 Hong Kong Data Centre Sector (Asian Cities-Savills Research)

Data centres are a vital part of ICT infrastructure for any digital economy. They provide a catalyst for the development of new content and applications and support the sustainable growth of more traditional pillar industries including financial services, trading and logistics. Given the city’s...

Data centres are a vital part of ICT infrastructure for any digital economy. They provide a catalyst for the development of new content and applications and support the sustainable growth of more traditional pillar industries including financial services, trading and logistics. Given the city’s reliable power supply, rich network connectivity, low climate risk, and strong data protection, Hong Kong is well positioned to serve as a regional data centre hub.

Hong Kong is among the best globally in terms of internet connectivity and bandwidth, with over a 270% mobile subscriber penetration rate1 , and has been one of the top three fastest cities in terms of average internet download speed over the past few years. There are three major players driving demand for data centres. First, cloud service providers such as Alibaba, Amazon and Microsoft are expanding as most enterprise users have started adopting cloud solutions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic if they weren’t before. Secondly, internet companies and application developers such as multimedia content providers or e-commerce players demand ample data storage capacity and plenty of data processing power given the growing importance of Big Data, industry 4.0, the Internet of Things and 5G.