The market for wearable technology could soon include 385 million people

wearable technology watch mobile commerce

If the wearables market does grow as many expect it will, it could potentially alter the way we “consume and use information”.

Erinn Murphy and Christof Fischer, of the bank and asset firm, Piper Jaffray, recently released a note to clients that stated that “wearable technology will be the next generation of devices to transform how individuals consume and use information.”

While the adoption of smartwatches has not been a rapid one, wearable tech as a whole has been taking off.

The note indicated that it may not be long before there are more users of wearable technology than there are in the United States and Canada, combined. Fischer and Murphy concluded that by the end of 2014, there were around 21 million units within the wearables category, but by 2019, there will be 150 million units. That represents a compound annual growth rates (CAGR) of a massive 48 percent.

The growth of wearable technology is expected to be greatly driven by fitness bands and smartwatches.

wearable technology watch mobile commerceWrist wearables will, by far, dominate this category, said the note. It described the growth rates in the category in comparison to other areas of the apparel industry, where the growth rates usually fall within the flat to low-single digit range. Footwear is within the low- to mid-single digit range, and handbags are in the same range of growth category.

Clearly, it is their belief that the wearable tech category is the area where the most potential currently lies. At the moment, they state that the primary target market for this type of mobile device is among people who are 15 years and older and who live in developed countries. That makes the target market about as large as 1.08 billion people.

The rate of growth that has been predicted by Fischer and Murphy was based on the historical adoption rate for tablets. They explained that they felt that the tablet adoption rate was a solid indicator of the type of growth that could be expected in wearable technology, as neither of those devices typically require network contracts and they are both often thought of as a device that is complementary to a smartphone or a laptop.

Leave a Comment


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.