Wearables industry to reach $90bn by 2020

The wearables industry is expected to reach 295 million units by 2020, with a market value of US$90 billion, according to market research, technology and strategy consulting firm Yole Développement. 

“Three markets will drive this impressive growth: consumer, healthcare and industrial,” according to Yole. The company has released a technology and market analysis titled ‘Sensors for Wearable Electronics & Mobile Healthcare’. 

Yole expects the consumer market, which mostly comprises fitness bands and smart watches, to grow faster than the other two. 

The healthcare market, which covers devices like hearing aids, blood pressure monitors and back monitor sensors, is expected to grow at a lower rate, since this market has already been growing for many years. Regarding the industrial market, Yole expected slow, steady growth through to 2019, with a significant uptick commencing in 2020.

Until recently, wearable electronics were often associated with the healthcare market — typically, bulky medical devices with only a few features and not optimised for ‘customer-friendly’ usage. Often, these devices perform a single task and are solely dedicated to patient monitoring and/or wellbeing.

“They are not ‘smart devices’. Indeed, their only mission is to accurately complete a single task. At Yole, we believe that a large part of the healthcare market will evolve in association with the consumer market, eventually blurring the lines between healthcare and consumer devices,” said Dr Benjamin Roussel, activity leader, medical technology at Yole. 

The healthcare market will in fact slowly merge with the consumer one, resulting in personalised medicine that involves self-monitoring of one’s health with smart and reliable devices, according to Yole’s report. However, these kind of devices, which require highly accurate, reliable tracking of biological signs in a non-invasive fashion, are not expected for another few years.

From a technology point of view, Yole analysed the impact on the MEMS industry in the report. The MEMS sensor industry has acquired strong experience in inertial sensors, microphones and pressure or environmental sensors from the smartphone market. Based on this experience, the MEMS players have pushed the boundaries of performance and size. Sensors are now small enough, reliable enough and accurate enough to be included in a pocket-sized device of only 9 cm³, while delivering performance comparable to that of a smartphone from 2013.

The integration of biosensors (HRM, sweat sensor, skin temperature) is more difficult, due to lack of experience and technical challenges. Moreover, battery limitation is pushing the industry towards more optimisation, even on the hardware side, through either packaging innovation or new designs with lower power consumption. Software is another area that’s acquiring value, with sensor fusion creating smarter sensors. Such improvements have led to new features like context awareness or ‘always-on’ sensors, which has increased device intelligence.

“All these improvements will lead the global sensors market for wearables from 112 million units in 2014 to 835 million units by 2020, which is proof that this market is still in its infancy,” said Guillaume Girardin from Yole.

A detailed description is available on www.i-micronews.com, MEMS & Sensors reports section.