Smart glasses shipments to hit ten million by 2018

In the same time the app-enabled wearable device hardware market is expected to be worth around $19 million.
Shipments of smart glasses are expected to increase from the current estimation of 87,000 this year to ten million per annum by 2018, reports Juniper Research.
Towards the end of this period prices for the wearable devices are expected to decrease, making them more appealing to a consumer crowd causing a growth in adoption rate.
However, they will not achieve critical mass unless they become more than a complementary device or secondary screen, such as the Galaxy Gear which has been dubbed a ‘companion device’ to other Samsung gadgetry.
Nitin Bhas, author of the report, said: “These devices would need to incorporate intuitive and user-friendly functionalities and capture the imagination of the general public making the technology seamless within their daily routine.”
The consumer sector will primarily drive sales, followed by enterprise and healthcare sectors – first generation applications like video documentation and communication will be used heavily in healthcare.
Gartner reported that smart glasses are giving CIOs a new vision into how wearable technology could impact their businesses, predicting that $1 billion could be saved per year in some industries.
However as the possibilities are realised via diagnostic reference, surgical assistance and monitoring the consumer sector will be more willing to embrace the technology.
In the enterprise sector, there are already use cases for smart glasses, such as engineering to logistics applications - which are currently being worked on by developers.
If consumers are going to push the sales in these wearable devices as the research predicts, then developers will have to work hard on rolling out attractive hardware and apps.


http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/read/...by-2018/022799