The latest additions to Qualcomm’s suite of wearable platforms, the Snapdragon W5 and W5+, enable ultra-low power functionality for next-generation connected wearables “with a focus on extended battery life, premium user experiences, and sleek, innovative designs,” said the chipmaker Tuesday. The platforms enable manufacturers to scale, differentiate and develop products faster “in the continuously growing and segmenting wearables industry,” it said. New enhancements to Snapdragon W5+ offer half the power consumption of the previous generation with a 30% smaller size, it said.
Cooling demand led to wearables' first-ever quarterly decline, as Q1 shipments dropped 3% year on year, reported IDC Tuesday. The research firm cited consumers’ spending shift from categories “outside of wearables” after years of “precipitous growth.” Wristband shipments tumbled 41% due to supply shortages and weaker demand, IDC said; watches grew 9.1%, at 28% of the category. Apple’s Watch SE had “surprising resilience," with 2 million shipped during the quarter after a year and a half on the market. "Consumers are increasingly becoming aware of their health and with more pricing options, there seems to be a watch available for everyone," said analyst Jitesh Ubrani, noting competitive products from Google and Samsung. Hearables sales slipped 0.6% in the quarter, after experiencing a boom period driven by work- and learn-from-home trends, IDC said. Apple AirPods’ growth flattened in Q1 on competition from low-cost alternatives, it said. Apple had 31% of the wearables market in the quarter on 6.6% year-on-year growth; Samsung shipments declined 9.9% for 10.3% share, it said.
Vuzix executives will host a conference call Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. EDT with investors to discuss a “new corporate development,” said the company Tuesday. The previously unscheduled call comes about a week after CEO Paul Travers said Vuzix stands by projections of a bright future for its augmented-reality and smart glasses businesses, despite a 36% decline in Q1 revenue he attributed to “timing delays of customer rollouts” and a general worsening of “world market conditions” (see 2205110006).
“Macro conditions” including COVID-19 and the “geopolitical tensions in Europe” sent Q1 revenue at Vuzix plunging 36%, as billing fell “short of expectations,” said CEO Paul Travers on an earnings call Tuesday. “We consider these results to be anomalous and largely associated with timing delays of customer rollouts and the general world market conditions,” he said. The supplier of smart glasses and augmented-reality hardware sees the AR industry “at its early beginnings,” so sales and profits are “difficult to predict month to month and even quarter to quarter,” he said. But global adoption of AR and smart glasses "is gaining momentum and by most accounts unstoppable,” he said.
Hearables shipments will grow 30% over the next two years to 200 million units, reported Juniper Research Tuesday. It highlighted Nuheara’s IQbuds and Bose’s SoundControl Hearing Aid as key growth drivers for the category. Proactive management of hearing loss and other medical conditions will comprise 18% of hearables shipments in 2024 vs. 12% last year, Juniper said, but increasing implementation of “right to repair” legislation could limit growth in the category. Juniper said vendors should expand their reach, leveraging the growing capabilities of digital voice assistants to address emerging hearables use cases such as industrial monitoring and productivity enhancement to expand revenue streams and capture early market share. The U.S. and Germany will generate half of global hardware revenue from emerging hearables use cases by 2024, it forecast, citing those countries’ high levels of industrial digitization, widespread connectivity and “ubiquitous consumer devices.”
The global wearable technology market, which generated $54.8 billion in 2020, is expected to reach $184.4 billion by 2031, with a compound annual growth rate of 12.8% from 2022 to 2031, said Allied Market Research Wednesday. The entry of large players, portable and convenient usage and an increase in health awareness will drive the market, though limited battery life and security concerns will check growth, it said. The industry is “steadily recovering” from COVID-19 supply chain disruptions, said the report.
Sports, fitness and wellness trackers will lead the way in a wearables market projected to expand by 13.2% this year to 344.9 million devices globally, reported ABI Research Thursday. As the wearables sector has experienced strong growth so, too, has the demand for wireless headsets, said analyst Filomena Iovino. Wireless headset shipments reached 502.7 million units at the end of 2021 and are expected to exceed 700 million in 2026, based on a 6.7% compound annual growth rate, leading the smart accessories market, said ABI. “As voice control becomes the dominant user interface for hands-free control of smartphones and smartwatches, true wireless headsets will also become significant drivers for the growth and adoption of voice assistants.”
Wearable tech will be the top fitness trend for 2022, an American College of Sports Medicine online survey of 4,500 health and fitness professionals found. “Tech advances have made it easy for users to collect important health metrics and work with fitness professionals and health care providers to develop healthy lifestyles and increase quality of life,” said Walter Thompson, past president and lead author of the study. “Though wearable tech has been dominating the fitness industry for some time now,” said ACSM, “it is no surprise that it is also increasingly finding a place within people’s fitness routines.” Of the seven global markets in which health and fitness professionals were canvassed, China was the only country in which wearable tech didn’t place in the top 20 trends for 2022, said ACSM.
Wearables shipments grew about 10% in Q3 to 138.4 million, led by hearables with 64.7% share of shipments, reported IDC Monday. Wrist-worn wearables had 34.7% of shipments. Apple continued to lead the overall wearables category, with 53% of dollar value, despite a 35.3% plunge in Apple Watch shipments during the quarter. AirPods and Beats true wireless earphones helped the company “cement its leadership” in wearables, though they were challenged by strong competition in the earphone and watch segments. "Demand has been slowly shifting away from wristbands towards watches as consumers increasingly want a more capable device and as the gap in pricing narrows," said analyst Jitesh Ubrani. The number of watches selling for under $100 is now equal to wristbands, Ubrani said. Growth from Indian and Chinese brands has been leading the low-end watch space; Apple, Huawei and Samsung maintain a hold at the high-end, he said. Samsung's recently launched Galaxy Watch 4 Series, on the Wear OS platform vs. Tizen, was “well received and is a significant step forward” for the watchmaker, said IDC. Samsung is trying to grow its wearables business by bundling hearables, watches and bands with smartphones; it’s also attempting to “steal wallet share from fashion spending with the launch of bespoke edition watches,” Ubrani said.
Wearable devices by 2025 will be “directly credited” with saving more than 150,000 lives globally a year, “as more consumers adopt the technology to guide their fitness and health journeys,” predicted Tom Mainelli, IDC group vice president-devices and consumer research, on a webinar Tuesday on future consumer tech trends. “Wearables continue to evolve to include new capabilities,” including electrocardiography, plus measuring heart rate, blood pressure and blood oxygen, he said, “All these new features really are a catalyst to a new world of hyper-personalized preventive healthcare.” IDC sees this as “a long-term trend,” creating “stickiness” for wearables vendors, plus “the software and services that can run on that wearable,” he said. “To play in this space, players are going to have to manage privacy and security of large data sets,” said Mainelli. “Over time, as wearables prove their worth to more users, we think the flywheel of invention will spin faster, so more wearables, more companies, will enter the wearables space.”