Multi-purpose wearables, including the Apple Watch, could bring in more than $16.5 billion in sales in 2020. That's according to analyst house Ovum which has made some big predictions for the growth of wearable tech sales in the next six years.
Ovum reckons that a whopping 394 million wearables will be sold in 2020, up from just 24 million in 2014. Only one in three of these wearables is likely to be a 'multi-purpose' i.e. a smartwatch with the rest being made up of fitness trackers and smart clothing.
But Ovum predicts that smartwatches are where the money is to be made with $16.5 billion out of the total predicted $26.6 billion going to smartwatch manufacturers.
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Of course, it's unlikely that all or even a huge majority of this will go to Apple but judging by the hype surrounding the launch and Apple's total domination of the tablet market with the iPad, we wouldn't be too surprised if Ovum is on the money here.
We've read reports from other research and analyst companies that fall in line with Ovum's numbers. Juniper Research suggests there will be 116 million wearable shipments in 2017 and 135 million in 2018, around half of which will be smartwatches. And in a further report, it stated that there will be 100 million smartwatch users worldwide by 2019.
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