Wearable electronics forecasts smartwatches passing activity trackers in popularity in the USA in 2016

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The NDP Group projects that 2016 activity tracker ownership will have peaked at 32 million in 2016 while nine percent of US consumers will own a smartwatch.

The eventual decline of the activity tracker is part of larger trends around miniaturization and ubiquity. Smaller, cheaper chips can be integrated into more products and clothing, “enabling us to focus less on wearing a single product, and more on having distributed sensors all around,” Hold told EE Times.

Nevertheless, Hold expects to see more advanced activity trackers compete with smartwatches, including trackers with GPS and heart rate monitoring, or more rugged styles. Smaller, more cost-effective connectivity chips could also lend to the addition of cellular connectivity to “one of the classic cases where a user may not want to carry their smartphone at all.”

More simplistic trackers will hit a wall, Hold continued, but keeping prices down will be a balancing act.

Apple Watch alone could have 30 million in sales in 2015

Slice Intelligence estimated 957,000 people in the US pre-ordered the Apple Watch when the online sales portal opened up on 10 April. Its report even stated the average devices per order was more than one, indicating that some Apple fans were happy to splash their cash on multiple models.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has stated the roughly 1 million pre-order forecast is on the low side, and has forecast worldwide shipments of 2.3 million devices by the end of May, based on the current delivery times. Kuo expects Apple will be able to hit 2 to 3 million units produced per month following the pre-order period.

There is solid application support for the Apple Watch:

* Yahoo! Weather. Weather is generally a glanceable item and is well suited for a small, wearable screen.

* Dark Sky weather app

* Mint, owned by Intuit, for personal finances and real-time status of monthly budgets

* Twitter

* Zillow for real estate

* Slack for collaborative messaging

* Microsoft’s PowerPoint. You can control a slideshow on your iPhone with PowerPoint on the wrist.

* RunKeeper for running activites.

Shazam, Facebook, Mailbox, OmniFocus 2, Things, Flipboard, Uber and more have all either already added Apple Watch support or announced it would arrive by April 24.

SOURCES – ZDNet, Forbes, NDP Group

Wearable electronics forecasts smartwatches passing activity trackers in popularity in the USA in 2016

by

The NDP Group projects that 2016 activity tracker ownership will have peaked at 32 million in 2016 while nine percent of US consumers will own a smartwatch.

The eventual decline of the activity tracker is part of larger trends around miniaturization and ubiquity. Smaller, cheaper chips can be integrated into more products and clothing, “enabling us to focus less on wearing a single product, and more on having distributed sensors all around,” Hold told EE Times.

Nevertheless, Hold expects to see more advanced activity trackers compete with smartwatches, including trackers with GPS and heart rate monitoring, or more rugged styles. Smaller, more cost-effective connectivity chips could also lend to the addition of cellular connectivity to “one of the classic cases where a user may not want to carry their smartphone at all.”

More simplistic trackers will hit a wall, Hold continued, but keeping prices down will be a balancing act.

Apple Watch alone could have 30 million in sales in 2015

Slice Intelligence estimated 957,000 people in the US pre-ordered the Apple Watch when the online sales portal opened up on 10 April. Its report even stated the average devices per order was more than one, indicating that some Apple fans were happy to splash their cash on multiple models.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has stated the roughly 1 million pre-order forecast is on the low side, and has forecast worldwide shipments of 2.3 million devices by the end of May, based on the current delivery times. Kuo expects Apple will be able to hit 2 to 3 million units produced per month following the pre-order period.

There is solid application support for the Apple Watch:

* Yahoo! Weather. Weather is generally a glanceable item and is well suited for a small, wearable screen.

* Dark Sky weather app

* Mint, owned by Intuit, for personal finances and real-time status of monthly budgets

* Twitter

* Zillow for real estate

* Slack for collaborative messaging

* Microsoft’s PowerPoint. You can control a slideshow on your iPhone with PowerPoint on the wrist.

* RunKeeper for running activites.

Shazam, Facebook, Mailbox, OmniFocus 2, Things, Flipboard, Uber and more have all either already added Apple Watch support or announced it would arrive by April 24.

SOURCES – ZDNet, Forbes, NDP Group