Federica Laricchia
Research expert covering the global consumer technology industry
Get in touch with us nowWearable segments
Businesses, military forces, and medical professionals have been using wearable technology for decades. Still, the private consumer market has only recently started to feature items such as smart glasses, smartwatches, hearables, fitness and health trackers, smart jewelry, and smart clothing. The most successful wearable devices on the market right now are smartwatches and health and fitness trackers, with the relative newcomer hearables taking over as the most dominant category. In fact, hearables occupied 31.5 percent of the wearables market in 2021, while smartwatches held around 30.5 percent, with around 142 million units shipped in that year.Top players
The leading wearables vendors are Apple, Xiaomi, Huawei, and Samsung, with Apple holding the largest share of the market. Apple’s strong position in the wearables market has mainly been established by the Apple watch, creating dominance in the overall wearables industry. Indeed, Apple's wearable device shipments amounted to about 162 million units in 2021. With a strong presence in the health and fitness wearables market, Fitbit had been a leader in the wearable industry until 2017. From this point, it began to be overtaken, first by Apple, then by the Chinese company Xiaomi, whose Mi Band fitness tracker has achieved great success.
