Medical intervention could unleash 'hockey stick' growth in wearables marketMedical intervention could unleash 'hockey stick' growth in wearables market

"Health and medical monitoring is becoming a key driver in wearables and there could be greater growth in the sector if new features, such as Huawei's inflatable blood pressure cuff on its D2 smartwatch, start to gain healthcare approval," suggested David McQueen, research director at ABI Research.

Unveiled in late September, the D2 garnered more than its fair share of attention for its inclusion of an ambulatory blood pressure monitor that is able to maintain a 24-hour watch (no pun intended) over the wearer's vitals.

With Apple and Samsung also both competing to offer the last word in smartwatch-enabled health and fitness tracking, advanced features like blood pressure monitoring could quite easily become the norm.

"This could potentially transform use cases from being consumer-led products to being prime targets for use by medical companies, insurers, and healthcare services," said McQueen.

Indeed, in the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been investigating the extent to which health-related notifications from wearables have led to appropriate and necessary medical intervention. By increasing its understanding, it is inching towards the potential approval and adoption of digital technologies like wearables in the healthcare sector.

"Along with use of AI in wearables, these are trends that could possibly create 'hockey stick' growth" in shipments, McQueen said.

His comments were made to Telecoms.com following ABI's updated outlook on the growth rate for the overall wearables market which, despite still being positive, has been revised down by approximately 100 million or so units, from 689 million by 2028 to 591 million by 2029.

Explaining the revision, McQueen said further segmentation of the smartwatch category into devices aimed at specific demographics – children, the elderly and so-on – plus uptake potential in India will drive volume growth but not to the degree that was previously forecast.

"Also, generally, the main brands such as Apple and Samsung still hold majority market share with higher end products, which I don't see changing massively over the forecast period and this also keeps the replacement cycle to around 3-4 years," he said.

ABI also expects the fitness tracker market to be affected by the increasing overlap with smartwatches.

"Activity and fitness trackers are facing downward pressure due to competition from smartwatches owing to the latter's fall in comparative prices and improved feature set," said McQueen.

That's not to say this particular area of the market is hitting the skids – McQueen still believes annual shipments will top more than 100 million during the forecast period, "as it caters to a dedicated user base seeking simplicity and affordability with basic functionality."

With global smartphone shipments seeing their first full year of growth since 2021, and with plenty of headroom still in wearables, there is cause for cautious optimism among device makers.