The future of Wearables: 7 major predictions for 2021

2020 - The year itself will have significant importance in the history of humankind. It gave us a lot of learning not only in professional life but also in our personal life. We learned about minimalism and the most important aspects of our lives – Health & Family. 

Entrepreneurs and product companies also have different learning path in terms of innovation and product synergy with Covid-19 pandemic. The focus was on early detection of Covid-19 symptoms in human body. People adopted different wearables to solve this purpose. Then the focus shifted towards sanitisation and contact tracing through Wearable Bands. Either with temperature sensor or SpO2 measurement through wearables, 2020 wearable development was all about detecting presence of Covid-19 symptoms in our body.

Over 200 million wearable bands, 350 million wireless earbuds to ship in 2021, as per the Canalys forecast.

Covid-19 Vaccine/Emergency Vaccine is almost here, masses have developed a herd immunity and we are on the verge of living life with the new normal. 2021 is going to be an amazing year. Let’s see how it turns out for the Wearable Industry. According to me, here are 7 major predictions for Wearables in 2021:

1.    Health parameters are a must, what else?!

The wearables have Heart Rate Monitor, Blood Pressure, Accelerometer, Gyroscope and in some cases GPS, Magnetometer and more. Every wearable comes with these health parameters what else we can add in the wearable. Mood detection, accurate sleep monitoring, contact tracing, gesture controls, remote interface to handle smart home devices, and many more can be the add-on features in Wearables through Software. Possibilities are certainly endless! Safety of the women, children and elderly is another aspect to consider with wearables. It will be much useful to develop wearables with the combination of different use cases. Lastly, we can also create one wearable as a platform to connect with other remote monitoring devices.

2.    Definitely something more than just Fitness Bands

Every wearable comes with steps, calories, distance and other basic fitness parameters measurement. Consumers are used to this information and even they have some of information available through their smartphones. Post the Covid-19 crises, every company is incorporating the usage of temperature and SpO2 in the wearable. There are plenty of other sensors which can be added in the wearables such as proximity, pressure, fall detection, ECG, GSR, PM 2.5, and many more. Additionally, they even can work on creating better experience of wearable payments through NFC.

3.    Bored with Smart Watches & Fitness Bands? – Show me different Form Factors

We have adopted the fitness band concept and are quite familiar with Smart Watches since long. It’s high time we move towards different form factors such as Wearable Ring, Bracelet, Hearables, Pendant, VR Devices, Wearables mounted on different body parts for sports performance monitoring, Keychain and more. 2021 will be focused towards different form factors in wearable category.

4.    Want to Move ahead of dependency on your mobile phone – Wearables with LTE, NB-IoT or maybe 5G Wearable

People have to connect lot of devices over Bluetooth such as AirPods, Car Play and Fitness band/Smart watch. There are various limitations in terms of battery life of phone, data transfer rate and accessibility even if you are Jogging, Running or doing any other fitness activities. We do have Apple Watches and other watches with LTE, but the price point is barrier for customers. Even for 5G, it will take time and huge investment to create 5G ready wearables but let's see the progress in coming years. 2021 will be more of Wearables with LTE, NB-IoT, and eSim at affordable price point.

5.    Battery Life – Longer Battery Life required

Wearable products come with varied battery life. Some come with 8-12 hours battery life, some even come with 1-3 days battery life and some last up until 14-20 days. Whether you are buying LTE/NB-IoT wearable or wearable with constant data/location sharing to mobile phone, battery drains quickly. We have to deal with charging nightmare of multiple devices when we are in hurry. New generation of wearables will focus on optimisation of battery to give longer time in one charge cycle. 

6.    UI the key part is missing – UI will be next big thing 

After the Covid-19 Lockdown, every entrepreneur wants a piece of global wearable market. I have talked to so many founders with similar requirement to detect the early symptoms of Covid-19 with wearable. Everyone thinks of solving the challenge; however, very few have thought about user interaction or user experience of the product. At present, I see or try multiple wearables and I have found out that these are not developed by keeping user friendliness in mind. Sometimes it misses step by step user interaction cycles. Adoption of WearOS is also a good thing to deliver better UI to customers. In 2021 or in the coming years, UI and UX will be the key thing in the wearables and especially in sub $100 category wearables. 

7.    Data I got – Accuracy of data is still a question. Let’s solve this in 2021! 

Wearables are packed with sensors. You get the data from sensors, but they are raw data. There is excessive filtration required on raw data. On top of it, we need to develop algorithms to get data that makes sense. You can set limits and notifications on those data. Combination of these can help to make different profiles of exercises and routines.

Accuracy of wearable technologies has been a debated topic since long time. As compared to healthcare devices, some wearables don’t have same accuracy level for different reasons such as sensor size and accuracy, evaluation method, measurement style, longer testing durations, proven and proprietary algorithms. The debate of accuracy will be persistent in 2021, but let’s work towards bridging the gap between the accuracy levels of healthcare devices and wearables.

Covid-19 pandemic is teaching us various things such as importance of our health and our loved ones’. Nowadays, patient-generated health data is available through wearables and cloud. It gives new opportunities for Healthcare professionals to execute hybrid healthcare model comprising of major part of treatment at home. Consumers are also active at monitoring fitness during their daily workout regime. With growing awareness of health, fitness, and sports, the wearable market is bound to grow significantly in 2021.

As many are aware that CES this year will be All-Digital. Hope this year’s wearable product announcements will have some of the things covered from above list. Happy 2021!

P.S. - Are you working on innovative Wearable product in 2021?

Let's connect and discuss how we can help your company for Wearable Product Design.

Reference Links:

Over 200 million wearable bands, 350 million wireless earbuds to ship in 2021- https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/trends/over-200-million-wearable-bands-350-million-wireless-earbuds-to-ship-in-2021/story/420766.html

Investigating sources of inaccuracy in wearable optical heart rate sensors - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-020-0226-6

With 5G, wearable devices are expected to become even more sci-fi - https://fortune.com/2020/03/24/5g-wearable-devices/