14 DAY TRIAL // This past decade, there have been several instances of new device concepts taking off in terms of marketing demand. We might have just established the next ones that will experience such success: wearable electronics.
This is actually something that happens on a regular basis on the technology industry: a new product grabs the attention of the public and experiences a soaring success for a few years.
After that, it either settles into a natural part of the ecosystem (like laptops did for PCs) or get sidelined by something else (like netbooks got sidelined by tablets in under a year).
The case of wearable computers / gadgets / electronics (or whatever you want to call them) might turn out to be unique though.
Simply because it might not turn out like any of the previous cases. Companies seem to have learned their lesson and want them to coexist with everything else on the market.
So they won't, in fact, push tablets aside, or smartphones or anything else (at least not for another decade or so), but they'll reach millions of shipments anyway.
In fact, according to Juniper Research, they will rise in shipments by a factor of 10 between 2013 and 2018, to 130 million.
Part of it is owed to how few smartwatches and augmented reality headsets have been released so far. Still, that's nice progress for a five-year period.
The only thing holding the new market segment back is the lack of a viable development platform for app developers. Fortunately, Android will run on most of the smartwtaches and headsets, so no one has to start from scratch.
“It is worth observing that this change in adoption levels can also be attributable to heightened consumer awareness on wearable technology and a better visibility of product adoption, especially in the smart watch segment,” said Juniper’s Nitin Bhas.