Smartwatches and ear-worn devices will represent 70% of the so-called wearables category of the IoT, with Apple dominating. The wearables market will grow at just under 8% annually through 2023, according to a new wearable forecast from International Data Corporation (IDC).IDC’s research puts the global shipments of wearable devices at 222.9 million units this year, a figure that will grow to 302.3 million by 2023.
Apple is expected to capture more than one-quarter (25.9%) of all watches in 2023. Smartwatches serve as health and fitness tools for consumers and enterprises, parental tracking of their kids’ locations and as part of the smart home ecosystem.
Beyond smartwatches, ear-worn devices are expected to grow from 72 million units in 2019 to 105.3 million in 2023. Many of these will be used as the front end to smart assistants or to track health-related metrics. IDC also expects brands to push forth added benefits such as enabling consumers the ability to cope with hearing loss.
“Not only is the market diversifying in terms of form factors, but it is also diversifying in terms of connectivity and distribution,” said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC’s Mobile Device Trackers, in a prepared statement. “Among all watches, close to half will have the ability to connect to a cellular network by 2023 as consumers along with enterprises and healthcare look to free the watch from the phone and as telcos push forward subsidies or financing options for watches with cellular service.”
“In addition to the proliferation of devices is the expansion of wearables use cases,” said Ramon T. Llamas, research director for IDC’s Wearables team, in a prepared statement. “Smartwatches, as always, will still tell you the time, but will move deeper into health and fitness and connect with multiple applications and systems, both at work and within the home. Ear-worn devices, while still centered on providing audio, will nudge into other areas like language translation, smart assistant deployment, and coaching.”