Has The Wearables Revolution Run Out Of Steam?

Wearable technology was seen as having a great future until. From Huawei to apple to Lenovo, there was a long brigade of manufacturers that showed confidence in the wearable market. But has the wearable revolution lost momentum or fizzled out of late. Anuj Bhatia takes a closer look.

- Anuj Bhatia

Wearables were the technology to bet on last year. Pundits predicted it was the future and brands large and small lined up a host of offerings targeted at this segment. However, looks like as though the momentum has suddenly died down half way that resulted in slowing down of the wearable market in general. Things have started to look bleak, although the activity/fitness band market has shown some positive progress throughout the year. We have tried to analyse wearable technology, which was seeing sizeable sales growth a year ago, but now has cooled down amid consumer resistance to buy newly launched devices.

Is the Apple Watch a failure?

According to research firm Idc, the smartwatch segment registered a decline in the third quarter, as total shipments were down 51.6 per cent from the same period last year. Just 2.7 million smartwatches were shipped in Q3 2016 versus 5.6 million in Q3 2015. Apple Watch was the market leader in that segment, shipping 1.1 million units, a decline of 71 per cent. It would not be the case of a failure, but not a clear success either.