Wearable tech market set to double to $54 billion by 2023, report says
pharmafile | November 13, 2019 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | pahrma, wearble technology
A new report from GlobalData has revealed that the market for wearable technology in healthcare is expected to more than double in value over the next few years, reaching a projected $54 billion by 2023.
This latest estimation is a considerable boost in a short space of time, rocketing up from the $23 billion the space was worth in 2018, representing a compound annual growth rate of 19%.
The report, ‘Wearable Technology in healthcare – Thematic research’, revealed that wearable technology is increasingly becoming an area of priority and investment for healthcare stakeholders.
Among its findings, the report noted that, as of 2018, 60% of the wearables market was accounted for by smartwatches, singling out factors such as seamless body integration, health and fitness information accessibility, and modular aesthetics as key drivers of growth in this regard. It also anticipates that by the end of 2019, 10% of the adult population in the US will have adopted smartwatch technology, again pointing to the improved maturation of the tech as a key factor, while the increasing prevalence of purpose-built silicon for the manufacture of such devices is also expected to be a core driver.
To illustrate this point, the report highlights that 79% of Fitbit’s revenue was generated through smartwatch sales in the fourth quarter of 2018; this figure stood at 44% over the full year – an increase of 8% the previous year.
While the dominance of smartwatches in the market is clear, the report also pointed to the growing contributions of eyewear tech, particularly virtual and augmented reality tools, with the utility of Google Glass in healthcare education being given as an example.
Hearables, or earwear, have also seen a surge in prevalence over the past few years, providing potential benefit in a range of areas including heart rate and sleep monitoring, step and calorie tracking and even brain wave analysis, an integration with personal assistants such as Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant push these benefits even further. While still in the early phases of development, the rapid adoption of hearable tech makes this a key area in the coming years.
Matt Fellows
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