

How wearables will add nearly $100B to the consumer and medical electronics market in 2025, offering new opportunities to sensors.
What’s news
- Update of the wearable report 2015 for consumer and medical applications
- New trends in the consumer and medical sector transformation
- Comparison between 2014 and 2019 market and forecast for 2025
- Roadmaps on wearable functions and related sensors
- Company market shares by wearable types
- Introduction to AI for wearables
Key Features
- Market data and forecast 2019-2025 in volume and revenue of global wearable systems:
- By products, including smartwatches, fitness trackers, earbuds, and CGM sensors
- By type, including head-worn, wrist-worn, body-worn and smart clothing
- Market data and forecast 2019-2025 in volume and revenues of global wearable sensors, including inertial sensors, microphones, PPG sensor modules, proximity sensors, ambient light sensors and pressure sensors
- Market dynamics including CAGR2019-2025 at wearable type level and at sensor level • Wearable market comparison in 2014 and 2019, forecast 2025
- Wearable OEM player market shares 2019 including total market and by product type
- Sensor player market shares 2019 by design win
- Wearable function and sensor roadmaps
Report Objectves
- Examine global wearable device market trends, competitive forces and dynamics, and market drivers
- Offer an applications overview of wearables for consumer and medical wearables
- Describe which sensors are used in which types of wearable systems
- Provide an overview of the main players at system and sensor level of the supply chain, with market shares
- Furnish market comparison and projections for 2018–2025
- Identify new functions and related sensors and technology requirements
- Deliver an overview of emerging wearable applications
Table of Content
Report objectives 5
Report scope 6
Report methodology 7
What we got right, what we got wrong 10
3-page summary 12
Executive Summary 16
- Definitions
- Market forecast and market trends
- Company landscape and market shares
- Technology trends and roadmaps
Context 41
- Scope of the report
- Historical perspective
- Megatrends and key drivers
- Wearable functions roadmap
- Consumer – healthcare and consumer healthcare concept
- Time-to-market scenarios
- Covid-19 impact
Market forecasts 72
- Segmentation adopted
- Global wearable market and forecasts 2018-2025 by products (value, units)
- Global wearable market and forecasts 2018-2025 by types (value, units)
- Market dynamics by types
- Global market comparison2014-2019 and 2025 (estimated)
Market trends 87
- Wrist-worn market trends
- Head-worn market trends
- Body-worn market trends
- Smart clothing
Sensors for market forecast 141
- Matrix wearable systems/sensors
- Global wearable market and forecasts 2018-2025 by products (value, units)
- Market dynamics by sensors
Market shares and supply chain 150
- M&A, collaboration, fundraising
- Player mapping and market shares
- Global wearable player market shares and ranking
- Analysis of wearable players
Technology trends 171
- Technology key challenges for wearables
- Description and trends by sensors including pressure, inertial and PPG, …
- Sensors for emerging applications
- Sensors for wearable roadmap
- Sensor number evolution
Reverse costing® – structure, process and cost analyses 233
- Example of wearable systems
Outlooks 243
- Conclusion
- What is coming next? What could happen?
About Yole Développement 250
Description
HIGH DEMAND FOR MORE FUNCTIONS TO SERVE A NEARLY $100B MARKET FORECAST
The era of wearables is definitely here and confirmed by large consumer adoption. Whether wrist-worn, head-worn and hearable, body-worn, or smart clothing, this is a market estimated to reach $97.9 billion by 2025, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate from 2019 to 2025 (CAGR2019-2025) of 11.2%. Wearables are even considered the new wave of consumer electronics, seen as the growth driver for smartphone makers whose market has now reached a mature level and a low singledigit growth rate. What makes wearables so successful today? Two main applications are the reason, namely fitness and health. If athletes quickly adopted connected bracelets to track their performance, health applications quickly took over with a wider public using smartwatches as well as earbuds, the latter showing great interest. This success is explained by the need for quantified self, allowing people to monitor their health parameters in a preventive approach against the continued prevalence of chronic diseases and driven by a transformation of health systems to fight against cost pressure. As a result, adding functions to wearables has now become essential to meet the needs of the greatest number of users. These functions can both be linked to the use of systems for greater comfort and interactivity, to capture vital data or even environmental data. With the addition of artificial intelligence, the goal is to merge all the information, aggregating it with the final goal of predicting and assisting in decision making. The objective of the report is to provide the most comprehensive view on the evolution of the wearable market as well as the challenges of meeting the needs of users.
CONSUMER WEARABLES REINFORCING PRESENCE IN THE MEDICAL SECTOR
Wearables have not only aroused the interest of consumer electronics players, but also attracted the attention of medical device companies, especially in this period of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, incorporating medical functions does not make a wearable a medical device. Consumer wearable companies mainly integrate functions such as fitness and wellness. Medical wearable companies, for their part, focus on patient monitoring and diagnosis. The key criteria for these medical wearables will be the reliability of the systems and accuracy of the data they generate. The use of medical wearables such as minimally invasive continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) sensors for people with diabetes replace measurements via glucometers by providing ease of use and comfort to the patients. In another example an increasing use of body patches allows hospitals to send patients home earlier and monitor them remotely. Today, medical wearables represent about 20% of wearable revenues. However, the lines are becoming blurred between medical wearables recognized as approved medical devices and consumer wearables integrating health functions. Developments of biosensor platforms integrated into wearables are now achieving medical grade performance and are integrated into smartwatches, as well as more recently into earbuds. But in this battle, consumer wearables offer affordable system prices and larger volume manufacturing opportunities that could benefit to large-scale clinical studies with mass data generation. Greater permeability between the medical sector, consumer healthcare and the notion of over-the-counter sales intensifies the competition between consumer and medical players. Manufacturers of consumer electronic systems have the largest market shares, with Apple claiming 39% of both the total consumer and medical wearables market.
TRACKING ACTIVITY, CARDIAC MONITORING, SLEEP QUALITY, EMOTION TRACKING – WHAT’S NEXT?
With increasing demand for new features, top consumer electronics manufacturers have a strong interest in finding out who will best meet users’ expectations. If tracking was first function of first-generation wearables, next generations have given ways to wellness, sleep quality, stress level and emotional monitoring functions. Behind these functionalities lie inertial, optical, audio, as well as bioimpedance and biopotential sensors. The market for these sensors should reach nearly $1.3 billion by 2025. To date, new features such as sleep quality, including sleep apnea detection, include an oximetry sensor for peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO2) in the form of a photoplethysmography (PPG) module using red LEDs, infrared (IR) LEDs and photodiodes. If the PPG modules were already used for heart rate measurement, the latter used green LEDs. Like the new Apple watch Series 6, the use of red and IR LEDs for the measurement of SpO2 imposes additional challenges. These include the fluctuation of measurements due to the movement of the wrist for a smartwatch, close contact between the sensor and the skin without external light in between for a bracelet or headphones. The use of inertial sensors helps to compensate from fluctuations related to user movements. The innovation is therefore in the sensors as much as in the software, which can aggregate information and make the system smarter for more precise measurements. What will be the future features and related new sensors that can measure blood pressure without a cuff like the optical based detection device of Samsung Galaxy watch? Who will be the next player that could provide sweat analyte measurement using infrared spectroscopy methods? Where are we with blood glucose detection in a truly non-invasive approach? This report describes the functionality of future wearables as well as technological advancements in sensors and detection systems to establish 5-10 year roadmaps.
Companies cited
AAC Technologies, Abbott, ADC, Adidas, AKM, Amazon, Ambiotex, Amphenol, Amplifon, ams AG, Analog Devices, Apple, Asus, Ava Woman, B.Braun, Bardy Dx, Beats, Beurer, BioBeat, Biofourmis, Biovotion, Bloomlife, Bodimetrics, Bosch, Bose, Care Predict, Catapult, Cephaly, Chronolife, Contec, Demant, Dexcom, Digitsole, Diodes Inc., Emotiv, Empatica, Epistar, Excelitas,Facebook, Firstbeat, Fitbit, Fossil, Garmin, Gatorade, GN Resound, Goertek, Google, Heimann Sensors, Hexoskin, Honeywell, Hovding, HTC, Huami, Huawei, Huma, IMEC, Infineon, Intel, Jabra, JBL, Kinduct, Klipsch, Knowles, Levi’s, LG, Lite-on, Magic Leap, Masimo, Maxim integrated, MC10, mCube, Medtronic, Melexis, MEMSIC, Micralyne, Microlife, Microsoft, Mobvoi, Motiv, ,Murata, Muse, Myontec, Neurolief, Nihon Kohden, Nokia, Nonin, Noviosense, Nutrino, Nuvo, NXP, Omron, Oppo, Orii, Osram, Oura, Philips, Philips innovation services, Polar, Riester, Rohm, Rythm – Dreem, Samsung, Sensoria, Silicon Labs, Siren, ,Sivantos, ,Sonova, Sony, Sony, Starkey, STMicroelectronics, Suunto, TDK, TE Connectivity, Texas , nstruments, Thim, UpRight, Valencell, Verily, Vishay, Vitalconnect, Vivo, Vuzix, Wahoo, Welch Allyn, Whoop, Withings, Xiaomi, Zio
and many more…