Despite all the hype and the massive investments by tech giants, wearables just aren’t taking with consumers.
Wearable technology growth had been expected to continue seeing striking increases for many years to come. That said, despite the best efforts of tech giants, this has not been the case.
Growth slowed down this year and is expected to continue dropping into next year as well.
eMarketer, the market research firm, has reported that wearable technology growth is slowing in a significant way. In fact, within the next year, eMarketer predicts this sector will increase by only 11.9 percent. In 2019, that number may even have fallen to a single digit figure.
Consumer interest picked up to a serious level about half a decade ago. From that point, Pebble had launched and built a solid customer base and rumors of an Apple smartwatch started circulating. From that point, a growing number of tech giants dived into the market so they would all have something to offer. Google and Samsung both managed to offer their own smartwatches before Apple released what was expected to be an iWatch (and what turned out to be the Apple Watch).
When the Apple Watch finally launched, wearable technology growth was expected to skyrocket.
Though the market did see sharper growth than had been experienced, it wasn’t the explosive rise that many had anticipated. Now, even with a product from virtually every major technology player, and as several design houses and traditional watchmakers have also entered the scene, the majority of consumer simply aren’t interested.
Wearable technology wasn’t expected to replace smartphones, but many thought that Apple’s smartwatch sales would match those of its iPad tablets. That never happened. Though fitness trackers did become quite popular, the market saturated rapidly and consumers didn’t seem interested in replacing and upgrading their devices when newer models appeared on the market. They wanted their gadgets for very basic purposes and didn’t want to spend more money on additional bells and whistles.
Now, as the wearable technology growth continues slowing, many companies are facing struggles surviving. Pebble ran out of money and Fitbit purchased many of its pieces as it shut down. Now, even Fitbit is starting to feel the pinch. These companies will need to find a new strategy as eMarketer predicts that the current wearables trend will only continue in the same direction.
