Increasing awareness is key to growth in wearables

Research from CCS Insights shows awareness in smartwatches has grown by 75 per cent on last year to 90 per cent

Awareness of wearable products in the UK is now at an all time high – fuelling sales growth.

Industry market analysts CCS Insight recently conducted a customer survey of 1,000 consumers regarding their awareness of smartwatches and smartbands.

The results showed a significant increase in awareness of smartwatches, up from 75 per cent a year ago to 90 per cent today. Awareness of smartbands, such as FitBit and Jawbone, were up marginally from 75 per cent year on year to 79 per cent.

CCS Chief of research Ben Wood, who hosted last year’s Beyond Mobile – Wearables event, said he expects fitness bands to carry the greatest momentum in the wearables space in the coming months and years, and credits Apple for the growing awareness of the wearable markets as a whole.

Ben Wood, chief of research, CCS Insight

“There is definitely momentum around fitness bands and that is shown by the volumes,” said Wood. “Next year is very important, especially with more mobile manufacturers piling in and that is good news because they are starting to create products that people actually want to wear.

“The big change was from 2014 to 2015 because the Apple Watch has put wearables on the map, and that is shown with awareness levels increasing by up to 15 per cent.

“We’re predicting that by 2017, Fitbit will become the first company to cumulatively sell 100 million wearables

“Fitness bands are on fire. Consumers really like them because they are a really clear offering. If you’re buying one, it’s because you want to lose weight and keep track of what you are doing.”

For full coverage of the 2015 Beyond Mobile – Wearables and Accessories conference, see the upcoming issue of Mobile News (issue 602), out on Monday.

original article Mobile News Online
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