After being an emergent market for the last four years, wireless
wearable health device manufacturers shipped nearly 30 million units in 2012, up
from almost 21 million in 2011. This
growth is expected to continue through 2017 and produce a CAGR exceeding 41
percent from the shipping of 169 million units, according to a recent ABI research report. The report predicts that
fitness or activity trackers will account for 60 percent of the devices and 23
percent will be for monitoring seniors aging in their homes. Collectively, only
14 percent of these devices will be care oriented and equally split between
remote patient monitoring and point of care use.
The cause for this explosion is cited as the rise of
imbedded blue tooth connectivity into smartphones and then the integration of a
number of wearable devices that mostly monitor consumer-oriented sports and
fitness activity. These devices are
characterized as non-invasive (meaning nothing penetrates the body), utilize wireless
connectivity, and are related in some way to monitoring health. Polar, Garmin, Nike and Adidas are the leading
shippers of wearable devices with start-ups not even close, according ABI.
Earlier in the year, the wearable's market was estimated to
be worth $1.5 billion in 2014 by Juniper
Research and $6 billion in 2016 by IMS.
Given that this report sees the wearable device market for
patient care counting for only 14 percent of the market, then by extrapolation,
the market offers a $210 to $840 million opportunity to developers. Is this large enough for all the vendors that
are offering solutions to pursue?? When
could we expect consolidation?
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