A new report has predicted that worldwide shipments of wearables for enterprise and industrial use will increase to 66.4 million units by 2021 due to high levels of interest and market momentum.
The number is a considerable increase from the 2.3 million enterprise and industrial wearables that Tractica says were shipped in 2015.
Tractica expects the market share of enterprise and industrial wearables to increase over time even though they still have a very small portion of the overall market with respect to unit volumes and revenues.
A cumulative total of 171.9 million wearables are estimated to be shipped between 2015 and 2021.
Smart watches, fitness trackers, body sensors, and smart glasses are reported to be the main device categories that will be shipped.
Tractica research director Aditya Kaul said: "In the past year, the enterprise and industrial wearables market has moved into an implementation phase, with the focus shifting from public announcements to the hard work that needs to be done behind the scenes to get wearables rolled out at commercial scale."
Kaul noted that a range of new use cases are emerging for workplace wearables, focused on application markets such as retail, manufacturing, healthcare, corporate wellness, warehousing and logistics, workplace authentication and security, and field services.
Earlier this month, Tractica predicted that global shipments for healthcare wearables will increase to 97.6 million units annually by 2021. The worldwide healthcare wearables market is estimated to account for $17.8bn in yearly revenue by the end of 2021.
Fitness trackers, connected wearable patches, and smart watches will play an important role in the increasing use of wearables for health and wellness.
Earlier this year, Gartner reported that the popularity of the Apple Watch, fitness wearables, and virtual reality headsets will contribute to sales of wearable devices, with sales predicted to increase by almost a fifth this year.
