Demand for wearables is growing strong – and it looks like it will continue that way for some time. International Data Corporation’s (IDC’s) Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker report for September shows that wearable device shipments will reach 76.1 million units in 2015. That’s up 163.6% over 2014. By 2019, worldwide shipments will reach 173.4 million units (which translates into a compound annual growth rate of 22.9%).
There are a number of factors that have come into play to make this happen: in a nutshell it’s more vendors, more devices, lower price points and strong consumer demand.
IDC’s numbers include both basic (e.g. fitness trackers) and smart wearables (i.e. wearable computers with their own processing capabilities). For the record, smart wearables only account for about a third of the total market, but that’s expected to change in quick order.
So what is expected to lead the charge on the smart wearables front moving forward? The biggest interest appears to be on operating systems for wrist wear (watches and bands), including WatchOS (aka Apple Watch), Android/Android Wear, Pebble, Tizen and Linux.
And while WatchOS has a 58.3% market share in 2015, IDC predicts it will drop to 47.4% by 2019. Android/AndroidWear is expected to show the most growth, from 17.4% market share in 2015 to an estimated 38.4% in 2019.
Read a summary of the IDC results.
What wearable device do you have on now or, do you have your eye on for the future?
By the Cel-Fi Team