The latest Apple Watch update will introduce a new feature that notifies users of potential high blood pressure, rather than providing continuous blood pressure readings. This strategic choice from Apple suggests that health wearables don't need to offer constant, highly technical readings to be useful. Smaller health wearable companies should take note: Doctors may not trust frequent wrist-based blood pressure data anyway. Instead of focusing on constant readings, the priority should be on developing features that provide meaningful, actionable insights for users and their doctors.

The news: Apple is bringing back blood oxygen monitoring for Apple Watch as part of its health and wellness features. Apple discontinued the feature in the US in 2023 after a patent dispute and court ruling forced the halt. The takeaway: Apple still leads smartwatch brands with a 22% market share, but its dominance has slipped. Health and wellness features incorporating AI assistance are key for future growth. Tech companies should market wearables as health tools for consumers, especially to older demographics who have greater health needs but lower smartwatch adoption rates.

The news: Samsung’s just released Galaxy Watch 8 series comes equipped with new health and wellness features for sleep, stress, and activity. Our take: Samsung’s new features (e.g., antioxidant measuring, vascular load) are too niche to move the needle in consumer adoption. Health wearable players should lean into product capabilities that easily integrate with smartphone apps and that aren’t overly complex or clinical, such as chatbots delivering personalized recommendations based on user activity, exercise, and nutrition data.

More than a quarter of the US population wears a connected device, including a growing number of older consumers who are interested in health and fitness tracking.

Smartwatches and fitness trackers face slump: Rising inflation, economic uncertainty, and slowing innovation are ending pandemic-era hyper-growth as the segment matures.

We forecast that there will be over 25 million US Apple Watch users this year, nearly half of all US smartwatch users. But Apple is seeking a bigger piece of the pie, leaning into health and safety features with its latest Watch devices to attract new (and current) users.

Apple dominates surging smartwatch sales, but Google is entering the fray: Growing interest in smartwatches and headphones in emerging markets like India indicate potential for Google and partners to grow Android’s ecosystem with devices like the new Pixel Watch

Payments Ecosystem: This year will reveal how providers must adapt to lasting pandemic-driven digitization across payments channels, ranging from in-store retail to B2B ecommerce.

See which health stats wearable users track

Getting smart with accessories

Google I/O Day One: Wear OS, quantum computing, and 3D video conferencing were highlighted on the first day of Google’s annual developer conference.

This report explains the rise of tech-focused SDOH initiatives among US health insurers and hospitals, unpacks how these entities’ heavier focus on SDOH has ushered in opportunities for digital health vendors and tech companies operating at the periphery of healthcare to help address nonclinical health gaps, and lays out the factors driving the prioritization of SDOH and inhibiting these efforts’ growth.

This report presents our annual 10 major trends in mobile that will affect mobile marketers.

This year, 23.8 million US millennials will have used a wearable device at least once per month. That's roughly a third of the millennial population, according to our estimates.

If you’re still looking for a holiday gift for a parent or grandparent, a wearable device could be well-received. Americans 55 and older are the fastest-growing group of electronic wearable users in the US, according to eMarketer’s latest wearables forecast, largely due to the devices’ enhanced health features.