News Feature | February 6, 2014

Wearables Market Continues To Exceed Expectations

Source: Health IT Outcomes
Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Report predicts 90 million wearables will be shipped this year driven by sports, health, and fitness

Late last year, Berg Insight predicted sales of wearables would reach 64 million by 2017. “A perfect storm of innovation within low power wireless connectivity, sensor technology, big data, cloud services, voice user interfaces, and mobile computing power is coming together and paves the way for connected wearable technology,” said Johan Svanberg, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight.

Now, ABI Research is reporting more than 90 million wearable devices will be shipped this year alone. ABI projects a majority of wearables will come from healthcare and sports and activity trackers. Despite the release of Google Glass, smart glass products will not contribute significantly to the estimated 90 million devices.

ABI explains, “Activity trackers will continue to be the most popular wearable device as people carefully monitor their activity levels and energy output. Concerns around weight management and even obesity are the prime drivers behind this wearable device type.”

“The next twelve months will be a critical period for the acceptance and adoption of wearable devices,” says senior ABI analyst Joshua Flood. “Healthcare and sports and activity trackers are rapidly becoming mass-market products. On the flipside, wearable devices like smart watches need to overcome some critical obstacles. Aesthetic design, more compelling use cases, battery life and lower price points are the main inhibitors. How vendors approach these challenges and their respective solutions will affect the wearable market far in the future.”

MobiHealth News breaks the types of wearables down further, writing, “Shipment estimates for healthcare wearables are approximately 13 million in 2013, 22 million in 2014, and 34 million in 2015 whereas health and fitness wearable shipments are 32 million in 2013, 42 million in 2014, and 57 million in 2015. ABI also included smart clothing as a category. Projected smart clothing shipments were 30,000 in 2013, and will be 720,000 in 2014 and 1 million in 2015.”

MobiHealth News also notes “In 2011, ABI predicted that 80 million wearable wireless fitness sensors would ship by 2016.  A year later, ABI predicted 170 million wearable wireless health and fitness devices would ship by 2017, which would be a 100 percent jump.”