Research Articles

Having covered this industry for the past decade, IDTechEx has developed an extensive database of historic and current market data. In this article IDTechEx will do something that is relatively unusual for a market research company to do: publicly compare old forecasts with what actually happened.

Over the past decade, wearables have progressed from a niche curiosity on the fringes of the consumer electronics sector, to being a key strategic element for many of the largest technology companies in the world. The total market for wearable technology products has doubled in annual revenue since 2015, generating nearly $80bn in revenue in 2020. However, with momentum, product trends, and focuses shifting all the time, it is important to stay ahead of the competition and consider the trends which will drive the sector over the coming years and decades.

In medicine, as well as in the healthcare and medical device industries, different conditions, specialisms, products, and companies alike are often organized around specific therapeutic areas. Whilst this is an excellent and efficient way to enable adequate specialization, there are also cases where a more general approach to patient monitoring is required.

The development of new technology often creates new opportunities to provide value to customers in new products. Electronic textiles have hundreds of potential use cases, many of which are being explored by different companies around the world. So where is the "killer app" for e-textiles?

Electronic skin patches represent one wearable technology product type that is well suited for physiological monitoring. Over the last 18 months, the COVID-19 pandemic has driven a worldwide concerted effort to explore and revise our approaches to patient monitoring and infectious disease management. As with other wearable devices, electronic skin patch products have evolved significantly over this period of time.

IDTechEx have released their latest report on Electronic Skin Patches. The report, titled "Electronic Skin Patches 2021-2031", covers the market, technology, and players in this unique product sector, and predicts that the sector will be worth $10bn in annual revenue in 2021.

Investment and development in haptics is accelerating, and the supply chain providing the actuators, drivers and software behind these key components is evolving at a faster pace every year. IDTechEx's latest report on haptics, "Haptics 2021-2031: Technologies, Market & Players", predicts that the industry will be worth nearly $5bn in 2025.

IDTechEx have released their latest report on haptics, projecting that the industry will grow from $3.6bn in 2020 to nearly $5bn per year by 2025.

At IDTechEx, we cover emerging technologies and industry trends, and the COVID-19 pandemic has had a direct or indirect impact on all of them. In this article we will describe some of the key roles that these technologies have played in 2020.

The first electric hearing aid was created in 1898, and was arguably among the earliest examples of wearable tech. So it's fitting that, more than a century later, on- and in-ear technology is once again leading the way - this time as hearables, a sector now poised for substantial growth.

The wearable sensor industry will be worth $2.5 billion in 2020, having tripled in size since 2014. This comes despite the significant economic challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused a reduction in the total revenue this year.

Last week, Apple announced the latest features that will be added to the Apple Watch in watchOS 7. Amongst the range of updates were a series of new health app features, including new "mobility metrics" such as low-range cardio fitness, walking speed, stair-descent speed, stair-ascent speed, six-minute walk distance, double support time, step length, and asymmetry.