Smart wearables market seeing substantial growth while basic wearables continue decline

While it’s no surprise here, smartwatch sales are growing at a rapid pace, while traditional “dumb” watches are seeing a decline.

As reported by IDC, Apple and other smart wearable devices saw an increase of 28.4% in device shipments in Q1 2018, while the traditional wearable market saw a steep 9.2% decrease.

“With the move towards smarter devices, we’re also starting to see hints of where the wearables market is headed,” said Jitesh Ubrani senior research analyst for IDC Mobile Device Trackers. “Additional sensors, years of underlying data, and improved algorithms are allowing pillars of the industry like Fitbit and Apple to help identify diseases and other health irregularities. Meanwhile, roughly one third of all wearables included cellular connectivity this quarter, which has allowed new use-cases to emerge.”

It seems like consumers are looking at wearable technology as a way to increase productivity and get healthy. That’s no surprise as Apple has been seriously focused on health and fitness with Apple Watch over the past several years and shows no sign of slowing down.

In public, there has definitely been an increase in the number of Apple Watches wearers alone, not counting other smart wearables from the likes of Fitbit.