Wearable devices market to reach over $150bn by 2027

The historical context for wearable technology products is examined, looking at key yet contrasting sectors such as medical devices and commodity infotainment items like headphones or electronic watches. It then focusses on key trends today, ranging from societal megatrends (e.g. the aging population), to industry-wide innovation trends (e.g. evolving form factors and interfaces in devices), and finally down to core player-by-player strategies within industry and product verticals.

Fuelled by a frenzy of hype, funding and global interest, wearable technology was catapulted to the top of the agenda for companies spanning the entire value chain and world. This investment manifested in hundreds of new products and extensive tailored R&D investigating relevant technology areas. However, the fickle nature of hype is beginning to show, and many companies are now progressing beyond discussing 'wearables' to focus on the detailed and varied sub-sectors.

Within this report, we include sections on each of these key product areas, including fitness trackers, smartwatches, smart clothing, smart eyewear (including AR and VR), smart skin patches, headphones and more. We also look separately by application sector (including healthcare and medical, fitness and wellness, professional sports, infotainment, enterprise, military and fashion), giving detailed case studies within each, but also discussing the trend that is seeing increasing cross-industry collaboration and product development.

Wearable Technology 2017-2027: Markets, Players, Forecasts contains granular ten year forecasts describing revenues, volumes and pricing for 39 separate wearable technology product types from 2017-2027. To accompany this data, we have dedicated a chapter to the discussion of key trends throughout the industry as a series of case studies. This includes qualitative discussion backed up by key forecast data, and covers topics including the future of fitness tracking, a qualified case for growth in augmented, mixed and virtual reality segments, a study of smartwatches viewed in parallel to the future of standalone communication devices (e.g. smartphones), healthcare and medical devices and finally a study looking at wearables in the enterprise sector.

IDTechEx's team of expert analysts have been actively covering wearable electronics and parallel topics for the last decade. This report contains 90 company profiles and interviews with many of the largest, most innovative and disruptive companies in the ecosystem. All profiles are generated from interview-based primary research with key staff from the subject company, and are compiled alongside our other research to give maximum insight. In our end user interviews, we outline the future direction in some of the world's largest companies, outlining their vision for how wearables will fit within their business models, and what they feel is needed from the industry to drive further growth.