The latest report on wearable fitness devices describes in great detail the anticipated growth of the smart sport/fitness wearable devices market. In fact, the complete report covers 58 companies and is spread over 565 pages.
The information gathered shows that professional athletes and teams as well as regular consumers will be the primary leaders of market growth. However, the future of the devices will no longer be centered around what data they can collect, but rather on how the data collected can improve a person’s health and fitness performance and habits.
Most consumer products have so far focused on gathering data and presenting it to the individual. However, consumers still have difficulty grasping how a wearable device might ultimately help them beyond increasing exercise time.
However, professional teams have used wearable devices to collect meaningful data, which allows them to improve their players’ athletic performance and manage their overall personal fitness. The data accumulated is large enough to be interpreted into meaningful and actionable information. This represents an opportunity for wearable device companies to create early adopters out of professional athletes, which will in turn lead to larger sales and growth in the consumer market and amongst recreational fitness consumers.
Susan Eustis, the team leader on the report reinforces that view: “Wearables represent a multi-billion dollar industry. Within the wearables sports and fitness analytics industry, growth comes from professional athletes and teams that need to achieve an edge over their competitors and from consumers wishing to gain performance advantage in their routines by imitating what the professionals do.”
The report also focuses on the importance of sports analytics and how professional teams have moved beyond on-field play analysis, and are now focusing on players’ biometric information which they gather through wearable fitness devices. That information allows coaches and the medical staff to monitor details such as muscle performance, heart performance, respiratory performance, endurance and stamina of a player and make decisions based on that information. This also helps in preventing injuries and prolonging players’ careers.
You only need to look at some of the big players in the wearable devices market to know that it will continue growing and improving in the years to come. Some of the major companies in the world including Apple, Samsung, Sony, Nike, Adidas, the NFL and the MLB are featured in the report. It is also reasonable to assume that as long as the technology keeps improving, the price of devices will also decline making it more affordable for regular consumers, which will also drive market growth. All in all, it seems like a good time to be involved in the wearable device industry not only for end users, but also for tech companies as well as wireless carriers and medical organizations. Watch this space.
Some numbers from the report:
- Sports and fitness performance wearable market value: $3.5 billion
- By 2015, wearable devices shipment revenues will total $20 billion
- By the end of 2020, 340 million devices will be shipped
- Wearable apps will have a revenue of $850 million in 2015
- Almost 50% of shipped wearables in 2020 will support embedded cellular connectivity
List of top players in the industry:
- Adidas
- Apple
- Atlas Wearables
- Boston Scientific
- Cisco
- Citizen
- Dell
- Everfind
- Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
- Fitbit
- GoPro
- Huawei
- NFL
- Nike
- Polar
- Reebook