Mobile Devices

September 11, 2013

App-enabled Smart Wireless Accessories to Generate $23B by 2018

Juniper Research is a firm that specializes in identifying and appraising new high growth market sectors within the mobile ecosystem. On Sept. 11, 2013, Juniper released the results of the second edition of its report on app-enabled peripherals.

The report, entitled “Smart Wireless Accessories: CE, Fitness, Health, Payments & Enterprise 2013-2018,” forecasts that while this year we are seeing hardware and service revenue of $2 billion, by the year 2018 that number could reach $23 billion.

The report is designed to offer a comprehensive forecast data set. It projects the size and value of each of the five smartphone wireless accessory markets covered in the report. The report was taken over 30 forecast tables that were divided by eight key regions with over 1,500 unique data points.

The second edition report provides an extensive breakdown for several data points by segments. These segments include:

  • Consumer Electronics: adoption, shipments and retail value
  • Fitness: adoption, shipments, retail value and service revenue
  • Healthcare: adoption, shipments, retail value and service revenue
  • Payment: adoption, shipments, retail value and transactional revenue
  • Enterprise: adoption, shipments and retail value

The report indicated that there are four major essentials that led to this conclusion. They are:

  1. An increase in the adoption of the ‘software as a service’ proposition
  2. The development of additional services delivered within the app
  3. The emergence of a ‘freemium’ model in fitness and healthcare wearables
  4. The rise of payment transaction revenues

As mentioned in the title, the key areas that are seen as driving this increase in revenue are fitness, health, Consumer Electronics (CE), payments and enterprise devices. It looks like wearable technology, mobile commerce and the enterprise are all key factors in this growth.

Nitin Bhas, who is the author of the report, said, "The wireless accessory ecosystem is still developing and will evolve over the next five years to become a reality for a much broader audience." He sees payments and healthcare accessories as having a major impact.

The report reveals that the development of a robust environment for the creation of peripheral based business models will affect how revenue is generated. In addition, technology standards and regulations will also be playing their part.

A few other key findings of the report include:

  • Smart wireless accessory shipments forecasted to approach 170 million by 2018
  • A multi-channel strategy is essential to gain traction in the race to secure a place in this new market

The Juniper report also references the fact that while it is still new and undeveloped, use cases will emerge in the CE market over the forecast period. While this supports the rapid development of payment accessories in the medium term, companies are likely to focus on core markets for the foreseeable future, accounting for the market being skewed towards the U.S., Europe and Far East where services are already being offered.




Edited by Alisen Downey


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