2013/11/26 Emerging Wearable Devices Market Will Reach Sales of 125 Million Units in 2017, as Developer Interest Increases Nine-fold
Smartwatches, Smartglasses, and Fitness Bands will drive sales, driven by new and innovative apps from vibrant developer communityBoston, MA - November 25, 2013 - the Wearables Device Ecosystems (WDE) team at Strategy Analytics analyzed the emerging wearable devices market from a number of viewpoints, incorporating analysis of not only device vendors but also the apps and end user use cases which will drive sales of devices.
In the webinar “Wearables: The Next Great Consumer Market?”, Matt Wilkins, Director Tablets & Wearables, covered a range of topics. The strategies of technology vendors in the market today and in the future, usage cases by attach point, category dynamics, and specific forecasts for the smartwatch, smartglasses, and fitness band segments.
Wilkins stated “Texas Instruments, Google, and Samsung should be seen as the pioneering vendors for launching products at an early stage in the markets’ life-cycle, but key vendors among the second wave of entrants will include Apple and Microsoft.”
In discussing usage cases by physical attach point, Wilkins went on to say, “Key uses for head-mounted devices do and will include augmented reality, navigation, as well as in-view notifications”.
David MacQueen, Executive Director Apps & Media research, presented results from Strategy Analytics’ latest developer survey. “We found that in the coming year, over 27 percent of our panel of over 1,700 developers intend to create apps for wearable devices. This is a nine-fold increase from the 3 percent of developers which experimented with apps for wearable devices this year”, said MacQueen. “Consumers today remain to be convinced as to why they should buy such devices, but with so many apps likely to become available for this new category of devices, it’s a strong indicator that wearables are going to go beyond the current industry hype. We’re sure to see the sort of innovation which has driven the smartphone apps market forward and this will help drive consumer uptake of the devices themselves.”
Source: Strategy Analytics
