Fitbit sells 8 out of every 10 fitness trackers, the market research company NPD says. By the end of 2015, nearly 33 million trackers had been sold in the United States, compared to 13 million smartwatches -- a figure that might come as a disappointment to the industry analysts who had been predicting global Apple Watch sales of 21 million last year. However, consumers … [Read more...]
CES Day 2: Accenture Survey Says Wearables Are Too Hard to Set Up and Use
Every year, the management consultancy Accenture surveyed about 24,000 people around the world about the state of consumer electronics. We sat down today (a blessing in itself at CES) with John Curran, a managing director with Accenture's Communications, Media and Technology Group, to go over some of the survey's more provocative findings about intelligent devices. Curran … [Read more...]
Juniper Sees Fitness Trackers Staying Dominant, But Segmenting
Fitness trackers will lead the wearables industry until 2018, says a new report from Juniper Research, but will segment out into basic trackers and more deluxe products that compete with smart watches. Through 2018, according to the report "Smart Health & Fitness Wearables: Device Strategies, Trends & Forecasts" the number of fitness trackers being uses will triple … [Read more...]
Researchers Say 2018 Wearables Market Will Be 14x 2013’s
CCS Insight is out with a new report that says the wearables market in 2018 will be 135 million units, up from 9.7 million units last year. The industry, they say, will be dominated by wristware: 87 percent of the devices shipped that year will be worn on the wrist. Or so they say. Marina Koytcheva, CCS Insight's director of forecasting, more or less throws up her hands in … [Read more...]
Want to Sell Fitness Apps? Target Moms
The mobile analytics company Flurry announced recently that the growth of fitness app usage is roughly double the usage growth of the rest of the appiverse. In the first six months of this year, Flurry saw a 62 percent increase in fitness app usage; the rest of the world saw a 33 percent increase. (There are, in case you're keeping track, more than 6,800 iOS fitness apps in … [Read more...]
Fitbit Leads the Wearables World: Canalys
Anyone can project billions of dollars in the future, but counting actual shipping products is hard. The consulting firm Canalys reports that Fitbit shipped nearly half of all wearable bands in the world in the first quarter of 2014. Overall, Canalys reported, 2.7 million wearable bands shipped worldwide last quarter, and Fitbit's strength was despite the skin rash-related … [Read more...]
ABI Puts Enterprise Wearables Market at $18 Billion in 5 Years
ABI Research is guesstimating that the market for enterprise wearables -- that's business-related, not consumer -- will total about $18 Billion in 2019. Analyst Jason McNichol says the enterprise market will consist essentially of visor products (like Vuzix, Google Glass, and Epson Moverio) and healthcare-related devices. Smartwatches count, too, but as "BYOD" … [Read more...]
Researchers Say Wearables Market Worth $8B Today
We've all seen research reports with blue-sky hockey-stick graphs saying that the wearables market will be worth eleventy-gazillion dollars in 2018. But here's a sober look that puts a size on the market today: $8 billion, with most of it on your wrist. Futuresource says fitness devices currently make up about 97 percent of the wearables market -- a proportion that will drop … [Read more...]