B2B Enterprise & Industrial Wearables Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

B2B Enterprise & Industrial Wearables Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

The B2B Enterprise & Industrial Wearables Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 27.5% over the forcasted period (2021- 2026). The wearables market in an enterprise set up is at its infancy with major share of the applications designated to enhancing customer experience as of now. Going forward, wearables are to be extensively used to access customer data in real time, view business analytics, produce immersive customer experiences, factory operations, trainings and much more.

Key Highlights

• As of now the most common uses of wearables by customers themselves are from traditional touchpoints (e.g., point of sale), but the largest growth margin in the near future is expected to surface around cutting-edge uses that can take personalization of customer experiences (e.g., location-sensing technology) a step further.
• To start with, within the enterprise itself, wearables can play a major role in accelerating the companies' digital transformation by transmitting information back and forth while enabling the workers to complete their tasks faster. This is one of the applications where both vendors and companies can streamline processes to achieve faster results.
• The infancy of wearables market provides a significant opportunity for early adopters to shape the industry’s impact on business. From simple tasks like email messaging and project tracking to analytics, issue resolution, and on-field training, opportunities abound for wearables in the enterprise.
• For instance, in the insurance business wearables are being used in B2C processes like capturing images, documentation and consent in real time along with facilitating the process of claims and inspections. While the wearables are already acting as differentiators, their application can get extended to B2B admin processes within the next several years.
• Forward-thinking companies see wearable devices as an opportunity to harness the constant flow of data available. The influx of information is expected to shape the business world by creating new technologies, services, and even entirely new industries.
• The growth of B2B wearables are expected to be hamstrung by technical challenges like longer operating time, currently restricted by battery life and the limitations of other power sources, the balance between faster data transmission (for real-time operations) and low power consumption, weight saving, and biocompatibility. Data Privacy concerns might slow down the adoption of wearables in the B2B setup, where sensitive data is to be circulated through a network of wearables.

Key Market TrendsDemand for Smart Factory Set-Ups are Expected to Aid Growth of Wearables

• Industrial wearables are being increasingly used due to the steady decline in component costs and improvements in functionality driven by learnings from the consumer sector. Industrial wearables are being used to increase efficiency, improve safety, shorten communication loops, accelerate onboarding and training processes, and enable remote experts to confer on technical issues.
• Unfortunately, training is very hands-off by nature, especially in the manufacturing sector. This is because inexperience can lead to severe equipment damage, injuries or poor performance all around. Employers can leverage wearable technology to make this age-old process modern and efficient. General Motors, for instance, leveraged Google Glass, an augmented reality glasses to provide a unique, improved training process for its employees.
• According to the International Labor Organization every 15 seconds, 151 workers have work-related accident. ILO further divulged that each year at least 317 million workers have non-fatal occupational accidents worldwide. With wearable and embedded sensors, workers can be tracked to prevent injury from falls, heavy machinery or overexertion. Going forward, manufacturing units are expected to leverage the rise of Iot and connected machinery to make workplaces safer. Smart glasses with Augmented Reality (AR) are expected to be the next big thing in manufacturing facilities.
• IBM is working with North Star BlueScope Steel, a steel producer for global building and construction industries to develop a cognitive platform to ensure employees stay safer at workplaces. The system uses IBM Watson IoT for wearable safety technology. The technology, a part of the IBM Employee Wellness and Safety Solution, gathers data collected from sensors embedded in helmets and wristbands, analyzes it to alert employees and their managers in real-time.
• Further, the use of wearable devices for hands-free instructions and communication is a clear, practical application of the technology. Workers in the oil, gas and automotive industries, for instance, often need to give complicated, documented instructions. Since there is no audit trail for these kinds of instructions, with paper, it’s difficult to know whether instructions had been followed correctly or not. The software product that Intoware now has WorkfloPlus, that allows employees using apps on different devices (wearables, smartphones, tablets, etc.) to provide reliable information to show that a process has been followed properly.

North America is Expected to hold the Major Market Share for B2B & Industrial Wearables

• North America is expected to hold the largest market share for B2B & Industrial Wearables on account of the adoption of the technology, penetration of internet, and government expenditure on research leading to the development of technology for high-end applications like the military.
• According to CISCO, in the United States, there are expected to be 317 million total Internet users (94% of the population) by 2022, up from 298 million (92% of the population) in 2017. Further, 23% of all networked devices are expected to be mobile-connected by 2022.
• The future of military combat is expected to be high-tech as scientists create use the Internet of Things for combat gear integrated with biometric wearables to help soldiers identify the enemy, perform better in battle, and access devices and weapons systems using edge computing. The United States Army Research Lab recently awarded USD 25 million to the Alliance for the Internet of Battlefield Things Research on Evolving Intelligent Goal-driven Networks (IoBT REIGN) to develop new predictive battlefield analytics. The US Govt remains one of the largest investors and consumers of such technology leading to the proliferation of technology in the region.
• Further, multiple forward-thinking companies operating in the United States have been leveraging wearable technology for their operations. BMW in the United States, for instance, has been using smart glasses for inspection checking and quality assurance of its cars. The pilot that the company ran allowed inspectors to take data through photos and videos to document potential deviations in production quality, allowing BMW to get rid of paper-based quality assurance checks, made the checks efficient, and provided more contextual information related to the checks.

Competitive Landscape

The competitive landscape for the B2B Enterprise & Industrial Wearables Market is a consolidated market with a few players that dominate the market. However, with the proliferation of the technology that will reduce its cost and its increased applications in the labor-intensive service sector is expected to increase the size of the market. This is expected to attract several players into this market in the future. Some of the recent developments in the industry are as follows: -

• September 2019 - Everbridge, Inc., a pioneer in critical event management and enterprise safety software applications, announced a partnership with RiskBand, a leading provider of wearable, live-monitored safety devices for organizations and their workers to develop devices that help keep people safe and businesses running.

Additional Benefits:

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
• 3 months of analyst support

Companies Mentioned

Oculus VR LLC (Facebook)
Alphabet Inc.
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
Sony Corporation
HTC Corporation
Apple Inc.
Fitbit Inc.
Xiaomi Inc.
Seiko Epson Corporation
Microsoft Corporation
Texas Instruments Inc.
Toshiba Corporation

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