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This report is the culmination of IDTechEx's research in wearable technology over the past decade. Throughout this time, wearable technology has experienced a turbulent journey, with a meteoric rise in hype, accompanied by billions of dollars of funding, tens of thousands of new patents filed, hundreds of new companies, thousands of products, and tens of billions of dollars of new revenue generated. IDTechEx analysts have followed the industry throughout this period, documenting it's progress by collecting data, interviewing hundreds of companies, attending and organising events around the world, and contributing to the ecosystem throughout. This report summarises IDTechEx's findings over this time, along with the latest conclusions and outlook. It provides detailed overviews of each product type across the broad and varied wearable technology product ecosystem, complete with historic revenue and sales volume data back to 2010 and forecasts from 2020-2030.
Part of these forecasts include the impact of COVID-19 on this industry. Whilst this situation is evolving every day, the report also comes with a dedicated primer document on the effect of COVID-19 on the market for wearable technology products. This includes the latest narrative as the pandemic unfolds, case studies showing the specific impact of COVID-19 on certain sectors, plus discussion and constant evolution of the forecast data, both for the immediate sales in 2020 but also the changing medium-long term outlook. This primer is included as a separate document alongside the report which will be updated frequently as the situation develops.
The report details the significant success that wearable technology products have seen in the last decade, with a total market worth nearly $70bn in 2019, having more than doubled in size since just 2014. This historic growth has been driven by product types including smartwatches, continuous glucose monitoring devices (CGM), hearing aids, headphones and AR, VR & MR. The report looks at each of these sectors in detail, providing assessments and market data across all of the key players, technology and in the current themes for each product area. In addition, there have been many new types of wearable technology product in this time, ranging from new types of electronic skin patch, to smart apparel based on electronic textiles, to other new form factors for devices from footwear, to rings, to headbands. In assessing 52 separate product types, the IDTechEx report is unique in its breadth of coverage across all wearable electronic products.
The report contains details of 52 forecast lines across five key sectors, as shown. The objective behind this report was to provide as much data about the sales volumes and revenues for wearable products, and thus includes historic data back to 2010 and forecasts from 2020-2030.
Image source: IDTechEx
2020 brings economic challenges that many companies in wearables may never have experienced before. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on sales in many of the sectors covered, through disruption to supply chains, lack of consumer access to retail or other services, and general shifts in demand amidst the social and economic shock. However, the story is not exclusively negative with wearable products, with many product types having new opportunities during the pandemic. In acute care settings, this can be wearables for remote patient monitoring, allowing for vital sign monitoring during times of social distancing. In more general settings, maintaining good health has been demonstrated as one of the best ways to protect yourself against the worst of COVID-19, so trends towards devices which help one to do this have been positive.
The best way to prepare for what will come next in wearables is to learn the lessons of history and to track the key innovation, product and market trends which exist in each of the product areas within this diverse product category. The report addresses the broad spectrum of products by addressing each sub-sector in its own dedicated chapter. These chapters provide the key summaries and overviews from their own separate research reports, representing thousands of companies that have been covered and hundreds of interviews over the last decade. Sitting as the flagship report on top of this extensive body of work, Wearable Technology Forecasts 2020-2030 summarizes the latest and critical information about each of these industries to provide a full overview of the entire space.
This report is written to be a guide to the wearable technology product landscape for any player that is involved in this value chain. This could be a product manufacturer for a wearable device directly, but also any player from the value chain such as a material or component supplier, manufacturer, technology developer or otherwise. It is also written as a piece of reference material that would be useful to investors, policy makers, and right through to users of these devices. The team of analysts at IDTechEx works with a global client base across each of these industries, and information within the report has been tailored to answer the most challenging and important questions that all of these players have about this industry.