Gartner: Global wearable device revenue is expected to reach $28.7 billion in 2016

Smartwatch

The latest report "2016: Global Wearable Electronic Devices" released by market research company Gartner predicts that the global sales of wearable electronic devices will increase by 18.4% from 232 million units last year to 274.6 million units in 2016. Among them, the sales of Apple Watch and VR/AR devices will increase by more than 20%.

The report said that global wearable electronic devices are expected to generate $28.7 billion in revenue this year, of which $11.5 billion will come from smart watches, and Apple Watch is expected to perform well.

"As Apple's popular wearable device becomes a lifestyle trend, smartwatches will see a 48 percent increase in usage from 2015 to 2017, and are expected to have the greatest revenue potential of any wearable device, reaching $17.5 billion by 2019," said Angela McIntyre, research director at Gartner. "While smartwatches are among the best-selling wearable devices, their sales are still far lower than smartphones, which will outsell more than 374 million units in 2016 in mature markets and most regions in emerging markets, such as Hong Kong and Singapore."

The report also stated that fitness wearable devices, including wristbands, smart clothing, chest harnesses, sports watches and other fitness monitoring devices will continue to attract consumers' attention, and their market size growth is related to US consumer health plans.

As a luxury consumer product, head-mounted displays (HMD) are emerging in emerging markets. The report said that the HMD market will continue to expand in 2016, and consumers and enterprises will become the mainstream users of HMD products.

Recently, there are rumors that Apple is secretly forming a research and development team to enter the field of VR/AR products. Brian Blau, research director of Gartner, said, "New consumer-oriented virtual reality helmet display products, such as HTC's Vive, Oculus's Rift, Sony's PlayStation VR, and Microsoft's HoloLens, will be successful with video games and entertainment content and business software." In addition, film producers and sports leagues will adopt HMD products to enhance their traditional content and improve customer experience.