Providing Market Intelligence for 40 Years

In The News

Ring This Up: Smart Wearables Hitting Mainstream Status

Consumer adoption of smart wearables is now nearly half (48%) of U.S. Internet households, Kristen Hanich, director of research for Parks Associates, told a Connected Health Summit audience Thursday, signaling that the category is “crossing the chasm” -- or moving from early adopters to the mainstream.

Five years ago, “adoption was half of what it is today,” she noted, adding that as the category has evolved, consumers are increasingly turning to service subscriptions on top of the cost of the wearables themselves.

One third of wearable owners now have such subscriptions, Hanich said. These are led by cellular plans, but “fitness and lifestyle subscriptions, premium health insights, and health coaching services are in demand and growing,” she explained.

The wearables market is led by smart watches, “owned and used by roughly a third of U.S. internet households,” Hanich reported, followed by smart scales, and then connected exercise equipment.

Moving up, though, are smart rings and hybrid watches (which look like dumb analog watches despite being smart). Indeed, she said that 12% of households are likely to purchase a smart ring in the next six months, a figure just about equal to those looking to purchase both hybrid watches and GPS sports watches. Smart watches and fitness trackers still lead in consumer want lists, however.

Hanich pointed out that smart rings and hybrid watches have the advantage of being screenless devices.

From the article, "Ring This Up: Smart Wearables Hitting Mainstream Status" by Les Luchter

Previously In The News

Two out of five U.S. homes want to swap the remote for their voice

So notes a recent report from Parks Associates, which found that 43 percent of all broadband households in the U.S. that use — or plan to use — a smart TV or streaming media player want to be able to...

The New Face Of Digital Piracy: Part One

Consider: the Motion Picture Association of America estimated global losses to the movie industry at $18.2 billion — and that was in 2005. CreativeFuture, citing a 2013 study by NetNames, states that...

From Artificial Intelligence to Profitability: 5 New Rules for Streamers in 2023 | Charts

Parks Associates, which tracked over 350 standalone over-the-top (Ott) streaming services in United States alone in 2022, found that 87 of U.S. internet households subscribed to at least one in the th...

Smart home devices have a big data problem, and it's growing

That trend, to start making customers pay to access data, dovetails with research found by Parks Associates earlier this year, which noted that new smart home security customers spend about $55, on av...