Consumer adoption of smart wearables is now nearly half (48%) of U.S. Internet households, Kristen Hanich, director of research for Parks Associates, told a Connected Health Summit audience Thursday, signaling that the category is “crossing the chasm” -- or moving from early adopters to the mainstream.
Five years ago, “adoption was half of what it is today,” she noted, adding that as the category has evolved, consumers are increasingly turning to service subscriptions on top of the cost of the wearables themselves.
One third of wearable owners now have such subscriptions, Hanich said. These are led by cellular plans, but “fitness and lifestyle subscriptions, premium health insights, and health coaching services are in demand and growing,” she explained.
The wearables market is led by smart watches, “owned and used by roughly a third of U.S. internet households,” Hanich reported, followed by smart scales, and then connected exercise equipment.
Moving up, though, are smart rings and hybrid watches (which look like dumb analog watches despite being smart). Indeed, she said that 12% of households are likely to purchase a smart ring in the next six months, a figure just about equal to those looking to purchase both hybrid watches and GPS sports watches. Smart watches and fitness trackers still lead in consumer want lists, however.
Hanich pointed out that smart rings and hybrid watches have the advantage of being screenless devices.
From the article, "Ring This Up: Smart Wearables Hitting Mainstream Status" by Les Luchter
The new Hulu service is an attempt by its traditional entertainment company owners to secure their footing in television’s digital future, where streaming has become the norm and competition from deep...
Beyond that, AT&T also gets revenue by licensing those movies and TV series to other pay-TV providers and subscription Net TV services such as Netflix. "Video and entertainment will remain the key dri...
Pay-TV operators are seeing a "slow erosion of the core business," analyst Brett Sappington at Parks Associates said. "After years of attempts to be more than just a 'dumb pipe,' pay-TV operators h...
Mobile payments are still an up-and-coming new capability for consumers; while mobile banking has clearly led the way, there’s still a lot of interest in mobile payments at least in some fields. Wh...
