Wellbeing wearables double users in 2015

At present 6.7m adults use health and fitness wearable devices and smartphone apps for activities such as monitoring their heart rate, recording steps taken and calculating fitness levels.

Half of these 6.7m use free health and fitness apps on their smartphone, while half have paid for apps or devices. However, the majority ( 84%) of people currently using free apps are likely to buy either health and fitness wearable tech devices or smartphone apps in the future.

Interest in wearable tech glasses is also growing with 15% of people currently using health and fitness wearable tech interested in buying them and 30% of those entering the market in 2015 interested.

Rioch Brewer, senior statistician at Kantar Media Custom said:  “The health and fitness wearables market is still in its infancy, and brands targeting younger audiences as well as those in the sport and leisure categories are leading the way. It is also interesting to see that consumers are happy to pay for apps and devices, which opens up additional opportunities for manufacturers and developers.”

The futurePROOF study is a syndicated subscriber study focused on adults (aged 16+) in Great Britain and is released bi-annually. This quantitative fieldwork took place in August 2014 with about 2000 people from Kantar Media’s TGI database interviewed via telephone.  Data has been weighted to be nationally-representative.