The global wearables market segment made a comeback in the second quarter of 2023 with shipments of 116.3 million devices and a year-over-year growth of 8.5% according to International Data Corp.’s (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Data Tracker.
It’s not all good news for vendors, however. The average selling price declined as competition increased and retailers sought to reduce excess inventory, IDC said. The category also had declined for the two previous quarters before this rebound.
Worldwide Wearable Shipments
Q2 was characterized by more competition from outside the top five companies, which created opportunities for smaller players like Withings and Whoop. Basic features, such as steps taken and distance run, helped the fitness category establish itself.
Consumers are now looking for more holistic features such as sleep monitoring, recovery metrics, readiness scores and stress level tracking, according to Jitesh Ubrani, IDC’s research manager for mobility and consumer device trackers.
IDC predicts that 520 million wearables will be shipped this year, which is a 5.6% increase over 2022. The top three categories are earwear (320.7 million shipments in 2023 and 4.5% growth rate compared to 2022), smart watches (165.4 million; 11.3%) and wristbands (32.0 million, 8.8% decline). The “other” category is expected to have shipments of 1.8 million units this year and 6.8% growth.
IDC expects wearables to reach 625.4 million units shipped by the end of 2027, a compound annual growth rate of 4.7%.
In June, IDC had predicted a 2023 rebound to 504.1 million units, which was slightly lower than its current prediction of 520 million shipments.