The wearable technology market was worth nearly $70bn in 2019, having doubled in size since 2014
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.
However, the industry, as per a report by IDTechEx, is expected to progress back to significant growth from 2021, reaching annual revenue of over $8bn per year by 2031. These are the headline findings from the latest IDTechEx report “Wearable Sensors 2021-2031”, which characterizes the entire industry landscape for wearable sensors.
COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has brought additional focus to sensors
The wearable technology market was worth nearly $70bn in 2019, having doubled in size since 2014. Sensors have provided the core features for many of these different products throughout this rise, and they will continue to be critical into future generations of products.
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has brought additional focus to sensors, including tracking early onset of conditions, facilitation of wearables for contact tracing, and remote patient monitoring for patients in isolation. Parallel trends see smartwatches driving towards medical metrics, hearables adding more sophisticated sensor options, skin patches successfully commercialising in new applications and many industrial, military and security applications maturing.
“As such, wearable sensors remain a fundamental enabling component for the entire wearable technology industry, and obtaining a clear understanding of their capabilities and potential is essential for any player within the entire value chain,” read the report.
IDTechEx describes wearable sensors in three waves. This idea, coined back in 2016, has stood the test of time and remains true to this day. The first wave includes sensors that have been incorporated in wearables for many years, often being originally developed for wearable products over previous decades.
A second wave of wearable sensors came following huge technology investment in smartphones. Many of the sensors from smartphones could be easily adapted for use in wearable products; they could be “made-wearable”. Finally, with the growing maturity of the wearable technology market over the past decades, many sensors are now designed from the ground up with wearable products in mind.
