"Apple" articles

Voice-enabled technologies have experienced massive growth in the consumer market since the introduction of Siri in 2011. The momentum in voice technologies is similar to the Internet boom in the 1990s. Companies who did not get on board and create a web presence, especially in commerce, fell behind to their competitors. The voice-first movement may elicit the same effect. For companies to capitalize on the current market opportunity, they must consider enabling a voice experience with...

The traditional watch market faces two forms of competition from the CE space. First, the ubiquity of smartphones decreases the need for a separate timepiece. Second, the smart watch category challenges the traditional watch segment directly. Shipments of Swiss-made watches fell by over 14% from July 2015 to July 2016, and traditional watch sales declined across all price categories. Recent Parks Associates research assessed the impact of smart watches on the traditional watch...

Apple recently released its holiday quarter’s earnings . Although the blockbuster sales of iPhones dominated the headlines, analysts and pundits were also drawn into the debate about the health of Apple’s smart watch business. Since Apple does not disclose its sales figures and only provided vague qualitative comments about this line of business, estimates and guestimates are all over the place. We have our take as well, outlined below, based on a slew of data from primary...

We recently released a  complimentary whitepaper  examining the top trends in the connected home, health, and mobile industries.  Top 10 Consumer IoT Trends in 2017 , which features insight from Parks Associates’ analyst team, examines key topics driving growth and monetization of the IoT. Wearables and smart watches are expanding as healthcare tools and will be integrated with other IoT applications. The market for smart watches, and for wearables...

It's no secret—the wearables market isn't doing as well as it should be right now. According to Parks Associates' estimates, the leading smart watch—the Apple Watch—experienced a YoY sales decline of ~53% in Q3 2016. Even with the Q4 release of the Apple Watch Series 2, Apple may be on track for moderate growth in 2016 relative to its 2015 debut. Compare this to Fitbit, the leading fitness tracker: as per Fitbit's SEC filings, its sales grew 21% YoY in the nine months ending October...

With news that Amazon is officially sold out (online) of Echo and Tap products until after the holidays, it looks like the smart speaker with personal assistant technology category has found its legs. Parks Associates forecasts 6 million U.S. sales for the category in 2016, which would double U.S. sales from 2015. Several trends are driving the smart speaker/personal assistant device market. First, consumer familiarity and use with personal assistant software are one the rise,...

After a week-long rumor mill about Fitbit acquiring the struggling smart watch maker Pebble, the suspense ended today when Fitbit announced that it is acquiring Pebble’s software assets and IPs , not the latter’s hardware business. Though it is a smart move to skip Pebble’s hardware business, the rationale for Fitbit to acquire Pebble’s software business remains unconvincing to me. We don’t know the price tag of the deal so have no idea how much value Fitbit attaches to...

This week, Chinese CE device and entertainment company LeEco made impressive announcements about its U.S. market entry plans. Which market? All of them. LeEco makes phones, bikes, VR headsets, and even an electric car prototype. It acquired TV manufacturer Vizio in July, and makes its own TV sets as well. It is not dipping its toe into the U.S. market with a single device type but jumping in wholesale with an entire ecosystem of devices. Recent research from Parks Associates shows...