14% of Brits now own some form of wearable tech
Wearable-loving Brits snapped up an estimated 3 million fitness trackers and smartwatches in 2015, which is up by a staggering 118% on wearable tech sales in 2014.
That’s according to market research company Mintel, who recorded the data for a 12 months period up to September 2015.
The breakdown of smartwatch and fitness tracker sales shows Fitbit, Jawbone and company are still ahead shifting 1.9 million devices (64%), while smartwatches accounted for 1.1 million sales (36%), which is not a bad effort.
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If you compare that to figures in 2014, fitness trackers made up 91% of all wearable purchases, while smartwatches accounted for just 9% of sales.
Since then, we’ve seen the arrival of the Apple Watch, which launched in April last year and no doubt gave those sales figures a boost. 2015 brought us significantly better-looking Android Wear watches as well like the second generation Moto 360 and the Huawei Watch. Samsung also launched the Gear S2, arguably the Korean company’s best smartwatch.
Unfortunately, Mintel didn’t give a breakdown of the leading brands but Mintel analyst Sara Ballaben explained why fitness trackers remain on top for now saying, “While fitness bands are, on average, less expensive than other wearables and have been on the market for relatively longer, higher adoption rates are also a reflection of the fact that wrist-worn devices offer a compelling practical benefit to active users.”
“The expected popularity of smartwatches in the short term is also the result of continued growth of the phablet market,” she added, “which creates more compelling use cases for wrist-worn watches.”
The data also revealed that 9% of adults in the UK are planning to upgrade to a new fitness tracker in the next 12 months, with only 8% of smartwatch owners saying they’ll do the same thing. 60% of consumers however are still concerned about how secure wearable tech is, while more than half still don’t see a value in owning a wearable device at all.
So it’s not quite a wearable revolution just yet, but there’s still time…
