The upcoming year might be the breakthrough year for wearables, in which they begin to achieve the mass market acceptance that has long been expected, according to a report from market researcher Visiongain.
According to the 186-page report, one of the main reasons for this is the entrance of Apple to the smartwatches market, which will disrupt not only the smartwatches market, but the overall size of the wearable technology market. As such, Visiongain has assessed that the value of the global wearables technology market will reach $16.1 billion by the end of this year.
As the Apple smartwatch will deliver many of the applications already delivered by fitness and activity trackers, companies competing with smart bracelets and other trackers will suffer market loss, and by 2018 they could see a great disruption to their specific market, the researchers predict. Overall, they say that each of the submarkets and regional markets within the wearables industry will deliver different business opportunities. But they also are expected to face challenges, which include regulatory decisions in the case of mHealth, low added value in terms of smartwatches, or high saturation levels for wearable cameras.
Many recent surveys have indicated that consumers are interested in tracking their data with mobile devices; in a report from Salesforce, 63 percent of millennials said that they would be interested in proactively providing their health data from WiFi/wearable devices to their doctor/provider so they can monitor their well-being.
