Wearables market set for explosive growth

Wearable device shipments will grow more than 44-fold from 17 million units in 2013 to 750 million units by 2020, according to market intelligence firm Tractica.

The wearables market is a mix of several different device categories — ranging from devices worn on the wrist, back, chest, head, foot or clothing. These devices can serve a range of purposes from tracking health and wellbeing, to recording events, to simply providing informational notifications. The wearable devices market is experiencing a period of heady growth, so far driven primarily by consumer adoption of fitness trackers, but smart watches are catching up fast and expected to eclipse fitness tracker unit volumes by the end of 2015.

Despite the rise of smart watches as the leading wearables category, the total market is much more diverse than smart watches, which Tractica anticipates will constitute just 45% of total device shipments during the years leading up to 2020.

Fitness trackers will remain a viable segment of the market and other device categories will also play an increasingly important role in market development. Over the next several years, the breakdown of wearable shipments by device category, predicts Tractica, will be as follows:

• Smart watches: 45%
• Fitness trackers: 30%
• Wearable cameras: 15%
• Smart clothing and body sensors: 6%
• Smart augmented reality glasses: 2%
• Other wearables: 2%

Tractica’s report, ‘Wearable Device Market Forecasts’ examines global market trends for wearable devices and presents 7-year market sizing and forecasts for device shipments and revenues during the period from 2013 through 2020. The comprehensive market model is segmented by device category including smart watches, fitness trackers, smart glasses, smart clothing, body sensors, wearable cameras and other wearables such as location trackers, smart jewellery and gesture-control devices. The forecasts for each device type are also segmented by world region, application market and connectivity technology.