Smartwatches will outsell tablets by 2018, as the trend for wearable technology takes off, according to a new report.
Researchers at CCS Insight forecast that smartwatches will lead a wave of wearable technologies from wristbands to spectacles in a burgeoning new category of computing, with combined sales of some 135m by 2018, half of which will stem from smart watches. This will be just short of the 70 million iPads sold by Apple in 2013.
After smartwatches, CCS Insight predicts that smart writstbands will be the most popular wearable device in four year’s time.
Although fewer than 10 million wearable devices were sold last year, Marina Koytcheva, director of forecasting at CCS Insight, believes that once prices come down and the technology becomes more fashionable will rocket.
“There are very few smart gadgets that I’d want to put on myself right now — they’re all very techie-looking — but things are changing. Now that the technology has been proven, design is catching up,” said Koytcheva.
“We’re still in the stone-age in the era of wearable technology, but people’s awareness of the technology is growing very fast. The big manufacturers are entering the market as they try to expand their product ranges.
“For people to cotton on to smart wearables, pricing also needs to come down . . . we saw it with tablet computers.”