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Health & Fitness Drives 40 Percent of Consumers |
ON World’s recent survey with 1,000 U.S. consumers found that 4 in 10 are interested in purchasing a smart watch and nearly half of these indicate that health and fitness will be their primary applications. San Diego, CA, June 26, 2013-- Wearable wireless sensors for health and fitness will be one of largest and fastest growing Internet of Things markets, says global technology market research firm ON World. With low power wireless standards such as Bluetooth Smart, products are quickly evolving from dedicated devices for fitness enthusiasts to mass market solutions. Soon, general purpose devices such as smart watches will dominate this space. “Smartphone integrated sensing has accelerated the adoption of wearable fitness devices,” says Mareca Hatler, ON World’s research director. “Over the next few years, wearable sensors will increasingly be used for vital signs monitoring, self-tests and other at-home health and wellness solutions.” While many of today’s wearable health and fitness devices are dedicated to one or a few applications, general purpose mobile sensing devices such as smart watches will become increasingly popular. In the near term, smart watches will add momentum to the growing ecosystem of mobile apps and health and fitness devices. Long term, however, smart watches will disrupt many dedicated health and fitness products. Sports watches are already getting smarter such as Garmin’s fenix and Motorola’s MOTOACTV that have integrated multiple sensors as well as Blueooth Smart and ANT for fast connections with smartphones, mobile apps and external fitness devices. ON World’s recent survey with over 1,000 U.S. consumers found that 40% are interesting in purchasing a smart watch. Of those interested in smart watches, 30% would most like to use their smart watch for fitness and 18% would use their smart watch primarily for health applications. Females are especially interested in fitness applications such as activity tracking and speed sensing while males are especially interested in using their smart watch for blood pressure and heart rate monitoring. Twenty-nine percent (29%) of smart watch users are likely to use their smart watch for activity tracking. Between 2013 and 2017, more than a quarter of a billion wearable health and fitness sensing devices will be shipped worldwide. Based on input from more than 2,000 individuals, ON World’s recently published reports “Mobile Sensing Health & Wellness” and “Mobile Sensing Sports & Fitness” analyze the global market for mobile sensing solutions for healthcare, general wellness and sports/fitness. Each report provides 5-year forecasts for dedicated health/fitness devices, sensors, communication chipsets, health/fitness-enabled smart mobile devices, smart watches, monitoring services, mobile apps and subscriptions. The reports also contains the results from several recently completed surveys and an in-depth analysis of 100+ companies and their products/services. The technologies covered include Bluetooth Classic, Bluetooth Smart, WiFi, ZigBee, ANT, BodyLAN, NFC and others. Each report may be purchased separately or as part of a set. The report synopses and executive summaries for both reports are available from:
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