The year 1972 has a marked significance in that it was the first time ever that computers became small enough to fit in a wristwatch. Hamilton Pulsar was the first-ever digital watch released that year. Another was the Calcron calculator watch that featured a nine-digit display. In the year 1983, the Seiko Data 2000 was released which was one more smartwatch predecessor. This watch could store two memos of 1000 characters each. It could also be attached to a keyboard that came with the watch, used to type memos.
Since then, smartwatches have evolved to now being able to track, store and transit complex data about the wearer. They can now monitor fitness information, monitor and spot potential medical conditions as well as transmit location information through GPS in the event of an emergency.
By the year 2021, the global smartwatch industry size was a whopping USD 30434.1 million which is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.2% between 2022 and 2030. This increase is attributed to the growing inclination for fitness tracking and the health monitoring features available on smartwatches.
Smartwatches Global Revenue
As per the report from the International Data Corporation (IDC), the wearables market of India saw a robust YoY (Year-on-Year) growth of 46.9% in the year 2022 with shipments reaching 100.1 million units. Of this total number of shipments, 30.7% were smartwatches. Growing exponentially from a shipment size of 4.95 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 8.59 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, smartwatch shipments represent a 73.6% YoY growth. Of the many models of smartwatches, basic smartwatches have continued to dominate the market showing an annual growth of 158% in the year 2022.
This growth has shown no signs of abating as the first quarter of 2023 shows that the Indian smartwatch market has recorded a 121% YoY growth. Putting it simply, India has emerged as the biggest market for smartwatches with a 27% market share.
Reasons for Growth of the Smartwatch Market in India
The numbers showcase a consistent and exponential growth of smartwatches in India. The growth has been significant, especially since the global covid-19 pandemic as people have become more health conscious. The first quarter of 2023’s recorded growth of 121% is also important as global sales actually declined during this time period due to macroeconomic situations. However, it was India’s growth contribution that restricted the decline in global shipments to 1.5%.
Product Affordability
One of the primary reasons for the growth is also the availability of affordable smartwatches.
Anshika Jain, an analyst at Counterpoint Research says – “India’s smartwatch market grew 121% YoY in Q1 2023 driven by affordability, rising customer demand, and availability of a wide variety of options in the budget segment.”
This growth comprised more than 40% of smartwatches sold priced under INR 2000. There are other reasons that have played a key role in the growth of the Indian smartwatch market.
Rise of Local Smartwatch Makers
Indian smartwatch makers dominated the smartwatch market claiming more than 90% of sales.
Anshika Jain added – “The share of India-based players crossed 90% for the first time as they were quick in terms of upgrading their portfolios and adapting their products to customer needs at a reasonable price point.”
In terms of global smartwatch shipments, Indian smartwatch maker Fire Boltt outpaced Samsung and reached the second position in the first quarter of 2023. Fire Boltt increased its shipments of affordable smartwatches three times YoY.
Globally, India also became the largest market for smartwatches, accounting for 27% of all worldwide smartwatch sales. North America accounted for 26% of global sales while China was a distant third with a 18% market share.
India’s lion market share of the smartwatch market is occupied by budget users looking for smartwatches that are affordable, medium, and premium. Customers want and expect certain features in a smartwatch – battery life, screen size, price, calling features, health tracking features, and last but certainly not least, style. Some of the best budgets buys within the Indian brand offerings are Titan, Noise, boAt, Fire Boltt, etc. These brands offer smartwatches that meet all customer demands and they are also quick to respond to new market demand with designs that are sleek while keeping the cost low.
5 Best boAt Smartwatch between 2000 – 5000 Top 5 Smartwatch by boAt
Conclusion
The Indian smartwatch market is growing and is showing no signs of slowing down even amidst the global smartwatch shipment decline and other economic problems. Indian brands are gaining prominence amongst strong global players and making a strong place for themselves.
FAQs
What are the reasons for the growth of the smartwatch market in India?
The reasons for the growth of the smartwatch market in India are:
Product affordability
Rise of Local Smartwatch Makers
Which Indian brands offer reasonable smartwatches?
Some of the best budgets buys within the Indian brand offerings are Titan, Noise, boAt, Fire Boltt, etc.
The pandemic started to spread across the world’s boundaries in about march of 2020. It soon accelerated lockdowns all over the world. Major and minor, both types of cities came to a standstill. Not only this, people were confined to their homes. We spent an enormous amount of time inside our houses.
Nothing stopped the pandemic too, thanks to technology. Essentials, medicines and other things were shared and delivered with the help of technology. With these advancements, technology came to us as a saviour. The only thing that jumped to the back seat was health. The health of people all over the world took a toll because of excessive screen time and the sedentary lifestyle we all were having during the covid 19. The virus is still not gone and the sedentary lifestyle still continues.
If you look at the data of shipments of the wearable industry in India, you will notice a steep trend. That graph shows that people are buying products that help them track their health statistics. This in turn means that people are slowly becoming vocal about the fact that their health is the most important asset that they own.
Many wearable brands are trying to capitalise on this trend of health consciousness. One of the players that are trying hard and equally shining is GOQii. You probably have already heard of this company. It has been very vocal about health and fitness, as they make fitness-related products. This is the article that covers the story of the ‘getting popular’ brand GOQii. Read this to know the man behind this innovation and the mission with which they operate.
GOQii is a fitness technology company. It is an Indian company in the sense that the brand is operated and even was generated by an Indian entrepreneur. However, it is an Indian company, it is headquartered in California. This fitness technology company offers a band of services and products that cover overall aspects of health for a person. It has smart wearable devices (Like a smartwatch or a smart fitness band). That device is coupled with a mobile app that works like the command centre for that wearable device.
GOQii Smart Watch
The unique thing about this company working in the health and fitness sector is that it offers a “coach” to every user. GOQii wearables and the android app has ‘personalised remote coaching. They have a team of health experts and doctors that guides every user to optimise his/her health goals. This optimization with each and every user helps maintain a healthy ecosystem in which people derive results.
GOQii Personal Coach
We all know or have heard somewhere that, everybody is different, you cannot examine each and everybody with the same instrument. That is when personalised care is needed and that is when the worth of personal coaches and trainers come into the picture.
They operated under the umbrella of a beta program until 2014 and then they closed it. After the closing of their beta program, GOQii became commercially available in India in August of 2014. It is to be noted that the beta program was closed in April of the same year.
The company has offices in Mumbai, Shenzhen, China and it hopes to have offices in the Middle East, the United States and Singapore. This venture has been highly trusted by investors of all sorts. Investors include Mitsui, NEA, Megadelta, DSG Consumer Partners, Galaxy Digital, Denlow Investment Trust, Edelweiss, Cheetah Mobile, GWC, Mr Ratan Tata (The OG investor), Mr Akshay Kumar (Popular Indian Actor) and Mr Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm CEO).
About Vishal Gondal – CEO at GOQii
Vishal Gondal is a serious serial entrepreneur. We mean it seriously when we say, serious serial entrepreneur. Vishal started coding at the age of 16. He was passionate about gaming and soon started to build games of his own. At that age when a person knows how to code, the only favourable thing he/she codes are games. Those were the early days of the Internet and computers per se.
It was later in the year 1998 when something really interesting happened for Vishal. It was the time of Kargil and he out of curiosity made a game named “I love India”, and the main purpose of the game was to shoot intruders in the Indian boundary. The game was an instant hit and got over a lakh download at that time,
In 1998. That was impressive at the time as it is today. Then he got an idea that games that are India made and a little patriotic thematic in nature will go a long way if produced nicely. That was the time when IndiaGames, a venture came into existence. It was the brainchild of Vishal Gondal. Then he worked with venture capitalists and all, took the company from informally a game maker to a big name in the gaming industry. In 2011 Disney bought IndiaGames at a deal of over 100 million dollars.
That is a lot of money. Most people would take that money and go on a vacation of life. That “most people ” are not Vishal Gondal. Vishal chose to not get stagnant or dormant, he chose to flow in the direction of his passion. His passion other than games is easily guessable, It is fitness and health.
Vishal moved to the health and fitness sector to work his ideas out. He was also into fitness as all those previous years had a toll on his health because he was working on computers a lot. He affected millions with his games (in a good and thrilling way) and now he did not choose to stay put, but he chose to provide value to the next billion people.
He enjoys running Marathons, Ultras, Trekking & SkyDiving. His love for the outdoors and pushing oneself physically dates to his growing years when he was a national level volleyball player. Vishal is also a long time TEDster, gadget & gizmo freak and a judge on two television shows ‘The Pitch’ on Bloomberg TV & ‘Your Wish is my App’ on NDTV.
His passion for technology, fitness & gaming led him to his next venture GOQii which is focused on helping people make a change towards a healthier lifestyle and be the force of good.
That is why he chose health as the domain for his next venture. He decided to jump on the health sector and that was how GOQii was born, the ultimate health and fitness ecosystem.
How was the Idea of GOQii Conceived?
The company was founded by a smart person named Vishal Gondal. He is a super tech enthusiast. He is also the former Chief executive officer of Indiagames. He is a big name in the gaming industry. Made some really successful and critically acclaimed games in the 90s and then the most recent hit FAU-G.
After exiting the gaming space, with a great dreamy exit from his own Indiagames when it was bought by Disney, he could have enjoyed life anyhow he wanted but he noticed something. He noticed that after all his star career in the gaming space, his health has taken a toll on him. Albeit, He was a fairly sporty person in his college and school time. His love for the outdoors and pushing oneself physically dates to his growing years when he was a national level volleyball player.
After affecting millions of people with his games in a good and thrilling way, he chose the health sector. When asked why he started working again, he said that he is just a passionate person who is trying to follow his passion of creating value and putting an effect on a billion people.
His goal is to see people healthy and happy. He plans to make not only people in India healthy but also plans to expand GOQii to a place that will make it responsible for health and fitness for many areas in the world.
As it is said that software is the most scalable thing in the whole world. Once the worth is proven by GOQii, its software can go overseas and start creating impact there too as it is doing in India. For its future, GOQii plans to expand its services to the Middle East, the United States, and Singapore.
GOQii is not just another smart wearable brand that promises to track accurate data regarding your health. Vishal Gondal plans to make it much more than it already is. Much more than the world has seen. He wants to evolve the digital fitness industry up to a level that is never seen before. Not to mention, Vishal has high hopes for the wearable industry. He even says that these wearables will soon replace mobile phones in the near future.
So what is the USP of GOQii? It is a legit genuine question that may haunt you. There are many many USPs of this fitness startup but few most noticeable features are listed here –
GOQii has a full-fledged health-friendly ecosystem.
Personalised health statistics with health experts.
The corporate challenge and User testimonials.
All these are the most loved unique prepositions that people love. Let us discuss all of them in a little more detail to understand the market in which they operate.
The GOQii Ecosystem
We, in the last paragraph’s last line, mentioned an ecosystem of health. That ecosystem is known as the GOQii fitness ecosystem. As we previously read that GOQii manufactures watches and bands and other wearables to provide you control of your health.
Not only this, but the fitness company also provides all sorts of help from, weather coaches or experts or doctors and nutrition people. That personal coaching aspect of GOQii is the innovation that acts as a USP or a unique selling proposition.
GOQii Ecosystem
The ecosystem entails the application which is connected to the smart wearable device that you wear. The tracker is connected and reports all data to coaches, doctors, and experts if you have the subscription. Every Health coach is a certified coach under the company GOQii.
This environment that they have managed to create is called the GOQii ecosystem. It is a full-fledged place for all your health needs, that is what the company strives to offer. It strives to combine a smart fitness band, an app, a team that is expert and has cared for your health. That team includes a personal health coach, all sorts of designated experts and a Doctor for helping you out to meet the targets that you set for yourself and for the people you love.
GOQii also plans partnerships with top labs in the domain of diagnostics. It helps you to get recommendations for tests that might help you on the basis of the targets that you need to tough. You can do some of the reports from the comfort of your home and you can then access the reports directly on the app.
The GOQii ecosystem is designed to keep chronic diseases under control through increased adherence to therapy, lifestyle change and continuous data monitoring. Doctors are adopting this ecosystem for managing chronic diseases of their patients and are seeing great results. It has an app locker that they call a health locker. It is a cloud storage tool. That helps people to save their health records.
That cloud has unlimited space so that you don’t have to worry about losing your health records. That locker is accessible and can be accessed even remotely via a login and pass. GOQii has tied up with diagnostics labs like Thyrocare, which allow users to book tests directly via the GOQii app. Test results are directly sent to the Health Locker to be reviewed by the GOQii Coach and GOQii Doctor.
There is one more thing that you get with the GOQii ecosystem. It has a bonus feature called “Karma”. It is quite similar to the real phenomenon of karma. If you do something good, you will receive something good.
GOQii Karma
With the ‘Karma’ feature GOQii plans to use the same philosophy for a good social cause. So what happens is, if you walk with this feature, you get points, the more you collect points, the more you can donate to social causes that the company supports. It matches the philosophy of the whole wearable brand of “Be the force”.
Personalised care with health experts
GOQii runs on two models, that too simultaneously. It has the main product domain, which is the smart wearable technology that it advertises with Akshay Kumar. The other domain is the personalised health coaches support. This is the back end sort of thing and you can only experience it with a subscription that you can buy with the product itself.
Both these packages combined help in building a rapport with your own health. The best thing about the combination of health and technology is that it is capable of providing personalised results and guides and suggestions to the person using it.
As we all know, people love personalised tech. Like we love Netflix recommendations, and the social media algorithms to work on personalised tech. This is very recently made possible with the help of new and efficient technology for maintaining data, big data. It is a field that deals with extracting data and making sense of large amounts of data. It is true that data is the gold of the 21st century.
GOQii Corporate Challenge
GOQii Corporate Wellness Program
One of the most stuck starts of people who are not living a healthy lifestyle at all is the corporate people. The pressure to rise up at the corporate level makes them sit for long hours and thus deteriorates the health of these hard-working people. We can easily see and witness all around us that corporate people are the most prone to health discomforts.
GOQii has innovated a cool thought in this area of life. The fitness company organises a corporate challenge every now and then. The corporate challenge is a sixty-day fitness event. So, it spans about two months in total. This corporate challenge includes daily virtual and fitness sessions that are corporate-friendly.
Corporate friendly exercises means those sorts of exercises that can be performed in a short space and with low intensity of work done or effort induced. This allows all the employees to walk, get active, increase their fitness levels and make a positive move towards living a healthier lifestyle. Moreover, it is all in the app, a single application that entails everything for your health.
GOQii Health quiz
GOQii Health Quiz
Not only the corporate challenge, but GOQii also has hosted a series of health quizzes in the past. The motive of these quizzes was to improve the general knowledge about health. It is often seen in our society that we tend to believe some myths and misconceptions of the fitness world.
The goal of these health-related challenges and quizzes is to bust the myth around health and common fitness in society. Moreover, GOQii has taken a step further than just casual challenges and quizzes of stagnant general knowledge, it now hosts experts that debunk myths around health.
If you visit their youtube page, you will find a plethora and plenty of videos that are hosted by health experts, personal health coaches, doctors and nutritionists. This sort of clear and unbiased knowledge is freely available, this is a great initiative by Vishal and the team at GOQii. It helps build a rapport with users who are truly willing to do the actions required to meet their health and fitness goals.
GOQii Arena
GOQii Arena
The GOQii social feature lets you discover and make new friends, share your habits, goals, health & fitness stories, as well as motivate each other! It helps you build communities of like-minded individuals who share similar goals with GOQii users within the app in your region.
GOQii Health store
GOQii Health Store
The GOQii Health store is a one-stop online health store that offers a whole suite of curated health products and services. These products are tested for quality by our experts before being launched in the store. You can also redeem your GOQii Cash for discounts on listed products.
User Testimonials (What the users are saying about GOQii)
The GOQii watches went on from a beta version to a full-fledged company in April 2014. It is still somewhere in the middle phases of growth in India. As we all know that India is a very big country and global brands are fighting very hard to establish themselves in our country.
GOQii is one of the native brands that is trying hard to speak up among such massive competition from global brands. One of the best ways to look at the quality that the brand creates is by checking its testimonials. Let us see what people are saying about the GOQii ecosystem.
User Testimonial of GOQii
“Rahul Pandit gets off medication and gets healthier with GOQii” read an article on a website. This is an article that was listed on the blog that the GOQii team manages. The blog has all the success stories of fat to fit and healthy and happy people who have used the product and the support of coaches from GOQii.
This proves that there are actually real stories that are transformed with products and services that GOQii strives to provide. The blog not only contains success stories but the blog tries to become a companion in someone’s fitness journey. It entails all the healthy tips, tricks, recipes that will help people get from a bad shape to probably the best shape of their lives.
A comment on GOQii’s YouTube channel
This is a user testimonial that typed words on Youtube. He is thankful for how he found GOQii and how it has become a part of his life. This is one example but there are plenty more. GOQii has many people supporting it and making it an established brand.
Akshay Kumar, the actor and probable epitome of fitness in India is the brand ambassador of this company. As it gets more and more views and subscriptions, one thing is sure, that if GOQii is able to stand the market in India, then probably it can win most of the world.
Conclusion
Being healthy involves a lot of factors other than just exercise. You need to watch what you eat, get quality sleep and manage stress effectively as well. With a lot of foreign brands trying to provide value in this space, there are very few Indian brands that are trying to enter and establish themselves in this market.
GOQii is one of them. It strives to provide a full ecosystem for health and fitness. It has personalised coaches, health experts and all sorts of advantages that the wearable tech industry has to offer.
GOQii was started with the same goal in mind. That goal was to make a billion people happy and healthy. The focus is primarily on India. GOQii, a collaboration of some of the world’s leading experts and an amazing management team who are driven by a passion for healthy sustainable living, and who believe that all of us contain boundless potential.
GOQii’s goal is to enable millions of people across the world to “be the force” by helping them unleash their untapped potential. The passion with which Vishal and team manage and build products for India, Is the fuel for such ventures. All these steps will lead to a healthy and happy India.
FAQ
Who is the founder of GOQii?
Vishal Gondal is the founder and CEO of GOQii.
What is the revenue of GOQii?
The revenue of GOQii was ₹220 million as of 2019.
Is GOQii an Indian company?
Yes, GOQii is an Indian company founded by Vishal Gondal, the company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.
As we develop multi-folds in the direction of technological advancements, we leave enormous amounts of things behind this trail. Yes, of course, leaving unnecessary things behind is a good way for going ahead in life. As technology gets more and more compact, we are witnessing the devices also get more compact. Data transfers are fast and now happen at unbelievable speeds. All these advancements are taking us to the new future, the future that is wireless.
Wires are a thing of the past now. Who knows them? What are they? this might not be a valid question today but for real, who knows the future? we might be talking about them in stories only. Like we talk about floppies, telegraph, and analogue television. We live in a wireless world now.
With the onset of the covid 19 pandemic and the spread of social distancing norms, we all are witnessing more wireless stuff than ever. Wireless is not even the near future, it is already here. Not only this it has transformed into multiple forms, like those of wearables.
Technology was in your hands in the form of smartphones, but now it is getting smarter and has even managed to enter your humble wardrobe. As devices are getting diverse in features they provide, they are also turning into something that can be worn. That is what we mean by wearables.
They are wireless gadgets with an inbuilt battery to support themselves. It can be a smartwatch, a fitness band, a wireless earphone, a smart pair of sunglasses and many more. These gadgets have already flooded the tech market in all forms, shapes and sizes, heavily democratising the market.
They are the new trend. I use the word ‘trend’ here because they are used more in a fashion sense rather than being used as a convenient device. The fight between the idea of “need to have” or “nice to have” always goes on. You will find people saying a lot of things about both the arguments everywhere. There cannot be a single accepted conclusion.
In Fact, the way they have entered the market is a unique way and it tells a story when we trace it. Smartphones were not considered something that was needed when they were just starting out. Feature phones were the ubiquitous devices that everyone used to call each other.
Soon when people saw these little palm handed devices, they were in awe. Curiosity drove them to these and smartphones made the magic spell work. The result was that humans fell in love, so much so that it is now a necessity for everyone to have a smartphone. This is the point in time when wearables are at their initial beginning, and they’re already flooding the market.
How Does This Wearables Technology Work?
We can say that wearable devices were present for a long time. Their instances have to be said from the very past of eyeglass discovery. When eyeglasses were popularised, people saw a new perspective of gadgets that can be worn.
Many years after that, when we have evolved technology so far and tiny, this tech is returning with big hope. Now, we can incorporate nano-transmitters coupled with an internet connection to a handheld device. These microprocessors are no less than a computer and can perform almost all the smart functions of a computer bigger in size.
Also, the growth in the domain of smartphones also helped the development of smart wearables. The betterment of mobile networks helmed the development of the wearable industry. That being said, fitness trackers were the first kind of wearables that were popularised around the world. The moment they became famous and made their own market, more features and forms got into the market. The humble wristwatch evolved to incorporate a screen into itself.
Wired headsets went on to rethink their purpose and Bluetooth headsets took their throne. A simple sunglass also was taken hostage by more smart and web-enabled glasses that could do more than just being sunglasses. The gaming industry was also stormed with virtual reality headsets and augmented reality screens and wearables.
India and the Wearables Industry
Smartphones in India and elsewhere started as an item of luxury and wasn’t really something that everyone could own. This situation saw a drastic change as technology penetrated deeper and deeper roots in India and everywhere else. This change can be observed quite easily. There is however a very good chance that smartphones could become a thing of the past in our future.
“Smart wearables are not just something that you can wear on your wrist and it will perform basic already told functions but it will be much more than that. In maybe three to five years this will replace smartphones and phones will be obsolete by then”, says GOQII’s chief executive officer, Vishal Gondal
The above sentence is proven right with these numbers. India’s wearable market grew about 93.8 per cent year on year in the July to September quarter, this year. India shipped 23.8 million units. Moreover, all these skying numbers are despite tough logistics challenges, increased freight charges, aggressive vendors at the other end.
India Wearables Industry
A famous wearable, smartwatch remained a heated up category all the way. It saw 4.3 million shipments in India in the third quarter. Wristbands or the infamous fitness bands saw a decline, IDC reports said.
This is what people are feeling about smart wearables. This really is looking like something that will most probably shape the future of technology in India.
Let us talk about some numbers in this rising trend. Before we go into the shipments and surge in demand for these tech wearables in India, we need to know about the information provider.
May 2021
The wearable market in India grew about 170.3 per cent on a year over year basis in the first quarter of 2021 (January to March). India saw a shipment of 11.4 million units according to the International data corporation, IDC.
The first quarter of 2021 also saw a surge in the domain of the watch and earwear category. Watches saw a growth in demand up to a wonderful 463.8 per cent year on year basis in the very first quarter. Comparing both the demand for earwear and the watches segment watches had a higher share of magnitude in numbers.
Even with that partition, earwear has managed a handsome three-digit growth in the first quarter. All these wearable surges show how people are reacting to the health situation in India. We are all more vocal about our health than ever.
August 2021
Following the previous growth trend, wearable grew even more by now. It saw a massive growth of about 118 per cent on a YoY basis (Year on year) in the second quarter of 2021 (April to June). It also saw a shipment of 11.2 million units of wearables, according to the recent IDC data. Watches continued to be the fastest-growing segment in the world of wearables and covered up to 81 per cent share in the write wear domain.
The category of wristwear grew at 35 per cent from that of a year ago. Another important trend that was seen was due to the COVID 19-second wave. The second wave impacted the overall wearable shipments by about 1.3 per cent in the second quarter of the year. This slump however did not impact vendors because they know that the demand will rise again once the situation is normal. So they tried to stockpile for next quarter.
Over the quarters, the smartwatch form factor seems to be appealing to the consumers, and Indian brands have been quicker to leverage this trend and align their device portfolio.
November 2021,
IDC’s report mentioned that India’s wearable market grew by 93.5 % year over year (YoY) in the third quarter (July to September). India saw shipping of 23.8 million units to its borders. In the third quarter, the growth can be seen even with the fact that logistics was hard and freight costs were increased after the decline in covid 19 cases.
In the month of September, the shipments saw a surge that surpassed 10 million. This was a record growth in wearable devices in the face of the month-long festival season in India. India’s favourite wearable in terms of shipments was again the category of smartwatches. Watches continued to be the fastest-growing pace at 4.3 million shipments in the third quarter.
While wristbands or fitness bands saw a decline consecutively for the seventh quarter. Other than that TWS (Truly wireless) came into the big picture, by reaching a 39.5 per cent share of earwear in the third quarter. However, the ear market is seen to be dominated by over-ear and tethered gadgets.
“The proliferation of new entrants in the mass market segment has increased competition, putting a lot of pressure on brands to differentiate in a market that is getting inundated with lookalike products,” said Jaipal Singh, Research Manager, Client Devices, IDC India.
“Celebrity endorsements are a key tactic for brand recall. However, to maintain the growth momentum they must invest more in newer designs and aesthetics, as well as newer collaborations with existing franchises, Singh further added.
All these trends point to a booming future in the land of this diverse country, India. There are many reasons why this type of technology is a hit in India, they are convenient and easy to use in any field domestically.
In a developing country like India where tech is still getting bigger, this technology seems to be driving the growth. Let us see how this field is becoming the trendsetter in India, and thus the advantages it provides to the general tech-savvy public.
Even if you are not a fan of the wireless movement, you will notice some brands that shine all over the place. Yes, we can call this time “The wireless movement” where everything is going wireless. Now we will talk about some brands that are the top players in this market segment.
Even when you think you are away from these names, you will hear them from your friend or a friend of a friend. These brands have made their presence heard, quite literally. The brands that are leading the wearables market in India are listed as follows.
A Gurgaon based company leads the sales and revenue for the sixth straight quarter of the smart segment wristwatch market. That company is “Noise”. Noise is able to create a sound in its wristwatch segment this year. It had about 26 percent of the market share in the quarter that ended on September 30.
After Noise, the next brand is an Indian brand that primarily manufactures audio devices, but also got into the smartwatch segment. “Boat” is that brand after the 26 percent share of Noise, it has more than about 23 percent share of the whole watch industry. After these top two brands, there are several others who are cashing on the growing demand.
The third, fourth and fifth name according to the market share is Fire-Boltt, Realme and Zepp (Amazefit). All these brands are combined covers the hundred percent of shipments that came to Indian borders this year.
After we talked about the watch market, now is the time to jump on another trend. That trend is most recent to get hyped among millennials. That wearable is the Wrist band, or commonly known as the fitness band.
After the pandemic refused to go back, people became super conscious of their health. They choose health over anything else and of course life over death. Among the new year resolutions, this segment also saw a jump in sales. Let us see who are the masters in this product segment,
Top Wristband Companies
Xiaomi undoubtedly rules the Indian wristband industry. The reason is the affordability aspect of their products. Xiaomi bands are easy on the pocket and do most of the work that a fitness tracker does. It has scored decent marks in all the spheres where people want it to perform. This is the biggest reason why Xiaomi alone covers almost 50 percent of all the market share of this product segment.
Followed by the Chinese Xiaomi, Titan ruled the market with a share of about 16.5 percent which is a subsidiary of Tata. Titan has made its place in people who like a little luxury, they have provided value over the past years consistently to increase customer loyalty. That is the reason why they now cover 16 percent but it has declined from the Q2.
Then comes the OnePlus, the brand that is originally a startup but has managed to own brand equity and great goodwill. OnePlus is seen as the premium segment of smartphones and wearables. It is the reason why it has seen a jump in market share from quarter 2 to quarter 3.
The wearables market is not complete if we do not talk about the earwear product segment. Ear Wear products include all ranges of sound devices. It includes headphones, earphones, and everything that has to do with sound. This product segment has also seen immense growth in the recent past. Let us see which brands rule this product segment,
Top Earwear Companies
Imagine marketing or the famous brand “Boat” is the top player in the earwear industry. The marketing is so smooth and viral that it covers almost about half the total Earwear market (shipment of units). Not only this, Boat has managed to increase the market share from about 45.5 percent in quarter 2 to 48 percent in quarter 3. This proves how people love products from Boat and how it delivers on the value that it stands for.
Next in the line is Realme, it is also a famous brand but it lags much behind Boat in terms of market share this year. Realme has to work hard to gain more market share next year. Then there is the premium smartphone producer OnePlus that has its Oneplus buds in the market and is quite famous among brand enthusiasts.
Samsung saw a decline and went from 7.9 percent of market share in quarter 2 to 5.3 percent market share in quarter 3. Ptron became a little famous but the growth seems to be declining for the brand.
It is to be noted here that even though most of the market is covered by these key players, there is still about 27 percent of the market that is free. That 27 percent of the market is owned by other brands that are not mainstream. This creates enough space for the above-mentioned brands to work harder and poach more market share for themselves.
Seeing the current trend we can predict that these brands are already fighting for more market share for the bright future in India.
While they are compact and pocket friendly, they may raise concerns over the effectiveness and efficiency of these gizmos. That is quite a legit question which we will be covering in this paragraph. For example, Smartwatches can help people with Parkinson’s disease track symptoms and then transmit the data to authorities, so that more personalised treatment plans can be developed.
We will see here how these devices are changing how we track, move and live our everyday life. Read on to remind yourself how useful these apps are.
Fitness tracking
Smartwatch
As watches and bands have conquered the market, the most famous purpose for wearables is to track fitness norms. It is however to be noted that we are talking mainly about smartwatches and fitness bands. They help in tracking calories, steps walked, heart rate, blood spo2(Oxygen level) in some pro gizmos and many more. It helps all the fitness freaks stay on track and be honest about their calorie intake. This also helps as a motivator for workout sessions.
Location and direction
Smartwatches in these times also have a feature of maps. They can help provide accurate direction and location services, that too without looking at your phone screen again and again. This helps for people who are mostly on road or travelling often.
Portability (Hands-free)
The most useful aspect of all the best features is the portability of these devices. Portability is the ability to be portable, that can be taken anywhere without much of a hassle. Whether you are using a truly wireless headphone or a smartwatch, this feature is the prime one that comes in handy. It lets you move freely and you can now do more activity than before.
Wireless Headphone
Here the winners are the headphone segment as wireless is winning every now and then. If you are in a gym, running or doing any physically taxing work then being hands-free or portable feels really helpful. That is why people are forgetting wired earphones or headphones and buying earwear that is wireless.
Key Challenges in the Wearables Industry
There are many challenges in this field of technology. We have made it possible for devices to be that small that can be worn but still there is some time left to truly reach a point in time of efficiency.
There have been notable failures too like that of Google Glasses. With these failures, it raises questions of feasibility in this segment of products. While the future of smart glasses is in an uncertain circle and that too we will have to see by ourselves. There are however more universal problems for smart wearables that have to be constantly tackled to provide value uninterrupted.
Battery Life
Due to the compact size of these devices, it is relatively harder to put batteries in there. Thus, they have to rely on smaller batteries that are easily discharged if not taken enough care of. Moreover, as these wearables get smarter and smarter, they get more features than before, which is also a load on the battery. It is not a new issue but an age-old issue with consistency. However, brands are trying their best to tackle this problem.
Inaccuracy
This is a highly debated issue but the news and further testing and testing tell us that there can be inaccurate information on your wearable screen. That little compact device may not be able to fully function as the big machine for a purpose. For example blood oxygen data or heartbeats information can be a little inaccurate.
Sync Issues
Larger brands with deep pockets don’t have these issues. But however, the market being open and everyone trying to tap the potential in this sector has enabled issues in the working of wearables. A brand like Apple cannot afford to have even a little problem with their devices like its watch series or Airpods.
Apple Watch
Trying to be like big brands, have led companies to just release stuff without proper user testing. Sometimes, there are syncing issues or irregular syncing with wearables like wireless earphones and smartwatches.
Data security and privacy issues
With the internet being the place where now most people live, privacy concerns are at an all-time high. With compact devices all over the place, this has further widened. Moreover, with the presence of China as a key player in the fitness band range, a red alert on privacy can be seen. We are not really sure about how companies use our data, what purpose that data fills and how it can be used in future. Our data ownership is being shared with big corporate technological giants and we have to be cautious of this act.
Technology was in your hands in the form of smartphones, but now it is getting smarter and smaller and has even managed to enter your wardrobe. As devices are getting diverse on the basis of features they provide, they are also turning into something that can be worn. The demand is massive in this sector. These smart wearables can be multi-purpose. The hands-free nature of these devices acts as the prime differentiating factor from other heavy/bulky gadgets.
They are changing and getting smarter, Microchip implants are now being used to replace keys and passwords. They are placed on your fingertip and the chips use near-field communication (NFC) or radio-frequency identification (RFID). IDC reports forecast good demand generation in the future for their smart compacts. There exists also Indian players like that of ‘GOQII’ in line who are trying to tap this huge potential. Whatever the future holds, one thing is for sure that it is interesting.
FAQ
What are the leading brands in the Indian wearables market?
Noise, BoAt, and Realme are some of the leading brands in the wearables market in India.
What is the market size of the Indian wearables market?
India’s wearable market grew 93.8 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in the July-September 2021 quarter.
The COVID-19 has alarmed the health and fitness of the people of every country. This pandemic has now pointed towards the healthcare sector, which is now facing a big problem. Due to this pandemic, the people are now more concern about their health and fitness. This will indirectly going to point on the rise in the IoT technologies in the healthcare sector. Let us see the complete report on- future of wearable health monitor post pandemic.
Statistics of IoT in Healthcare domain
There are no. of statistical reports available on the internet which provides you the background story of the fitness bands and we provide you the summarized statistical report on the same domain but also including the use of IoT in the healthcare sector. This report is made with the help of the Becker’s hospital review
Nearly three-fifths of healthcare providers in this sector uses the IoT devices in their institutions for better and instant health tracking.
73 % of facilities in the healthcare sector takes the help of the Iot devices to monitor their patients.
89 % of the facilities in the healthcare sector have suffered from a security breach in their respective systems.
87 % of organizations in the healthcare sector are planning to implement the IoT enabled services in their facilities by 2019.
Organizations in the healthcare sector feel that IoT has saved expanses up to 57 % for all their facilities provided by them.
After looking the present statistics in this domain, the Internet of Things (IoT) Healthcare market is now valued at USD 82.3 Billion in 2015 and is projected to reach USD 534.3 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 24.1% over the forecast period.
The IoT devices in the healthcare sector are providing the facility of real-time tracking. It is one of the crucial feature in the healthcare devices which plays an important role whenever there is a life-threatening circumstances present in front of us. The IoT devices in this case helps by gathering the vital data and transfer it to your respective doctors which can act as an on-time alerts which become quite critical. Also, these mobile applications and IoT devices can also send notifications regarding a patient’s critical conditions irrespective of place, time with the help of a single app integrated with it.
2) Analysis and Data Assortment
IoT devices in the healthcare sector are integrated with the other high-end technologies which help these devices in collecting the data and then report and analyze the data in real-time. This real time analyzation of data helps in storing the important data only. So, this helps in storing the crucial data on the cloud and other sources which used to be a hectic problem with the raw data.
3) Reporting and Monitoring
The IoT connected devices makes it easy for doctors and physicians to monitor patients’ health with the help of the modern devices and refined data. This is so much beneficial that the real-time monitoring can save lives in a medical emergency like diabetic attacks, heart failure, asthma attacks, etc.
The smart medical device connected to the smartphone app, collects the medical and other required health data without disturbing you in your work. These IoT devices collect and transfer health data like- blood pressure, oxygen, and blood sugar levels, weight, and ECGs and many more.
Untouchable band is one of the latest band, which came into existence in the market during the corona virus pandemic. Basically, it is a band specially made for the COVID-19 i.e. it is the special band which will help you get rid of unconscious habits of touching your face. This band will help you in training your mind by giving a mild vibrations whenever you touch your face at any moment of time. This band also helps in changing you many other behaviours like nail biting, hair pulling, thumb sucking and many other. This band will help you to get rid of the habits which are spreading disease around the world. This fitness band comes with a feature which will note down your body temperature continuously.
Other fitness wearables
The world of fitness wearables has now started to get recognition in the fitness industry. They have now become an essential part of every individual during their routine workout. Some of the interesting examples are:
1) Smart Shoes
This fitness wearable has the same functions as a fitness band, but its USP is just focusing on running, walking, jogging and many other related which are to your legs. A chips is fitted in the pair of shoes which can track the usual data such as distance and speed, and can calculate calories burned and many others which is done by all the smart bands in terms of fitness. One of the best thing about this fitness wearable is that they also make suggestions about, what should be the running style and how you can improve your technique for better output.
2) Smart clothes
This fitness wearable is just like a leggings or a socks that can track your movement during yoga or any movement to improve performance. This category of fitness wearable also consist of a sports bra which consist of inbuilt heart rate monitor. Later in the coming years, such type of more fitness wearables can be seen in the market for every specific workouts giving you the precise statistics about your body moment and your body health.
3) E-skin
This tech is in its very early days, but e-skin is basically Lycra-style clothing, filled with sensors that handle the work of many fitness wearables at once. For example, Xenoma launched an e-skin prototype in collaboration with Hugo Boss, specifically designed to track your activity during a golf game.
Harshit Verma
