Gartner: Fitness bands will give way to smart watches in 2015

Wearables have undoubtedly taken hold of your wrist, but that’s changing

The wearable device market will see a farewell in 2015. The health bracelets and monitoring devices that currently dominate the market, which lack screen interaction and apps, will face slow or even declining growth. The market is about to usher in the era of smart watches like Apple's Apple Watch.

Gartner analysis shows that the shipment volume of global wearable health devices, including health bracelets and sports watches, is likely to shrink from 70 million units in 2014 to 68 million units, of which smart bracelets will drop by 17% to 17 million units, while smart watches are expected to grow by 17% to 21 million units.

Why? Fitness bands, while popular now, don’t have as many features to excite consumers as Apple’s Watch, Motorola’s Moto 360 smartwatch, and others. They only have a fraction of the features of smartwatches.

As wearable devices move from health monitoring to the mainstream market, existing manufacturers in the market will face fierce competition from fashion brands, traditional watch companies, accessory manufacturers, etc. They also face the risk of users turning off their lights.

Unlike smartphones, tablets and PCs, which have similar functions, wearable devices can cover different parts of our body and perform different functions based on different paired devices. It is worth paying attention to how the first entrants to the market will maintain their lead in 2015, as many traditional companies have begun to make their own wearable devices.

In October, Gartner conducted a survey on the functions that users desire for wearable devices. The survey results showed that 42% of people who want to wear a wearable device on their wrists want to have the top five functions that current health bracelets cannot meet. These functions include using maps, taking photos and recording videos, receiving situational information, online shopping and web searches.

It can be seen that as a pioneer of wearable devices, health bracelets meet the early scene needs of users. With the improvement of market awareness, there are more things that can be done on the wrist, and it is reasonable to give way to smart watches with better screen interaction and richer functions.

For the pioneers of health bracelets, how to cope with the changes is something they must consider. Nike disbanded its hardware team early on and positioned itself as a health APP platform; Fitbit launched its own smartwatch, which of course resulted in Apple Store removing it from the shelves; Jawbone positioned itself as a life monitor and an accessory for other smartwatches and wearable devices.

In this market transformation and adjustment, there will be winners and losers in 2015

via: 199IT compiled from cnet