We recently reported that the Apple watch has gone from strength to strength in the last reporting period, and now outsells the entire Swiss watch industry to the tune of 10 million watches. Smartwatches, as a category however, are not exactly sweeping all before them in 2020. While wearables have seen significant growth over the past several years – largely due to their usefulness to the medical market in addressing spiraling healthcare costs, aging populations, and the burden of chronic disease – smartwatches have not been immune from COVID-19’s crippling effects. Delays in production mean that the number of smartwatch shipments in 2020 will be 9% lower than in 2019. The smartwatch market, has declined since the COVID-19 outbreak, the market is expected to start recovering from 2021 onwards. By contrast, cccording to GlobalData, the wearable tech market was worth nearly $27bn in 2019 and is likely to grow to $64bn by 2024 due to its increased awareness during the pandemic, including tracking disease contact, predict symptoms and monitoring patients. Tina Deng, MSc, Senior Medical Devices Analyst at GlobalData comments: “The pandemic greatly increased the awareness of wearable devices as their use cases increased. This has resulted in an increase…
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