Most wearable devices will mirror flattened tablet sales once wow factor is gone

USA: Beyond the fitness/health niches, all the general purpose wearables today are really a consumer "solution" that don't add much convenience to our lives - but still incur considerable cost and inconvenience of their own.  That will change soon, according the new report, WEARABLE SENSOR AND ELECTRONICS MARKET from The Information Network.

So far, most of the wearable devices we have seen have been gimmicks and are likely to be transient. Nike announced earlier in 2014 that it had decided to stop making its FuelBand –a wearable fitness device.

Smartwatch pioneer in September 2014, Pebble is hoping to make its platform accessible to more people with a permanent price drop of $50 and $30 for both the original Pebble and the Pebble Steel, putting them at $99 and $199 respectively.

The Information Network projects that the wearable market will bifurcate into two camps.  Those with a WOW factor will falter and go the way of the tablet, which we forecast to exhibit flat sales over the next several years.  These devices include wearable cameras and sports/activity trackers. However, the other camp of wearables will grow strongly, focusing on the healthcare industry and smartwatches.

The healthcare industry is one of the biggest opportunities for wearables, which will be used to provide data management and display systems, enabling doctors to, handle the flood of electronic health data and access it when they need it -- while examining a patient.

To seize mass-market adoption, wearables need to be essential and work as standalones. Because of the duplicity of functions on wearables and smartphones, wearable computing will need to cannibalize the smartphone market.  People will still use smartphones, just as people still use PCs, but what people do on smartphones today will be done instead on a wearable device.