Mobile Computing

Wearable Computer Market Will Grow 38 Percent in 2015

• By Christopher Piehler
• 02/26/15

In a recent interview, Annette Zimmermann, research director at technology research company Gartner, shared her outlook for the wearable computer market in 2015 and beyond. 

She said that Gartner foresess “strong growth” in wearables this year, with smartwatches, fitness bands and other trackers selling nearly 70 million units — up 38 percent from 2014. She added, “While the wearables market is currently a relatively low penetrated market, it has the opportunity to grow in double digits in the long term.” Accordingly, Gartner forecasts sales of wearables to reach 514 million units in 2020. 

Zimmerman said that the Apple Watch (due to be released in April) is bound to raise awareness for wearables, and “Samsung, Sony, Lenovo and others will have to come up with more attractive products to compete. Aside from the hardware, vendors will emphasize their ecosystems as well as finding synergies in adjacent markets.” 

With a number of manufacturers building health platforms based on gathering data from users, Zimmerman said that, along with new business models, the coming years will see “discussion on how best to protect the sensitive data that is being collected from wearables. In addition,” she concluded, “there is still room for improvement for most vendors to create more sophisticated apps and ecosystems around wearables.”