The State of Wearables 2026

The full report · 26 min read

Every third adult client who walks into your studio is already wearing a sensor. In Germany it is 35%, in the US 32%, in the UK 42%, and in India half the adult population. The question this report answers is not whether wearables are big. They are an $89bn device market in 2026. The question is what kind of market it has become, because the answer changes what a coach, a studio or a fitness brand should do about it.

The short version: it has become a saturated hardware market with a subscription business growing on top of it. Unit shipments are forecast to grow about 3.6% a year to 2028. Smartwatch users worldwide have stopped growing. In the US, the number of smartwatch users is flat at 43 million for the rest of the decade, and every dollar of revenue growth comes from charging each of them more. Meanwhile the two companies that treat the device as a sensor and sell the interpretation, Oura and Whoop, each crossed a billion dollars in annual revenue or bookings in 2025 and raised at $10bn and $11bn valuations.

That is the opportunity hiding inside the topline. The device companies have saturated the wrist. The data is being generated. And a large share of it is going unread, because 44% of Americans who ever bought a wearable have stopped using it. Here is the evidence, chart by chart, and then what to do with it.

Value is outrunning volume

Start with the two numbers that describe the whole market. IDC’s shipment series (chart 1) shows the wearables boom in one line: 29 million units in 2014, 346 million in 2019, a pandemic peak of 534 million in 2021, a dip, and then a slow climb from 560 million in 2024 to a forecast 646 million in 2028. That last stretch is 3.6% a year. The land grab is over; what remains is replacement cycles and a slow expansion into new markets.

Now put revenue next to it. Statista’s Digital Market Insights series for digital fitness and well-being devices (chart 2) runs from $34.7bn in 2019 to $74.6bn in 2024, $89.0bn in 2026 and $103.3bn in 2028. Smartwatches are the bulk of it ($55.2bn in 2026), fitness bands are the fast riser ($29.4bn in 2026, 3.4 times their 2019 revenue), and smart scales are the rounding error ($4.5bn). Between 2024 and 2028 that market grows 38% while units grow 15%.

Two different scopes, one conclusion: the industry sells roughly the same number of devices every year and makes each one worth more. For reference, GMInsights’ broader wearables estimate, which includes earwear and hearables, lands at $91.1bn for 2026, within 3% of Statista’s device-only figure. The numbers agree on the shape even where the definitions differ.

The categories: watches win, bands collapse, rings arrive early

IDC’s category split (chart 3) shows where the units actually go. Earwear is the biggest line and the least interesting for a coach: 400 million pairs of earbuds by 2028, almost none of them tracking anything. Smartwatches grow from 136 million in 2021 to a forecast 209 million in 2028, a 54% rise. Wristbands, the old Fitbit and Mi Band form factor, fall from 55 million to 29 million over the same period, a 48% collapse as the watch absorbs their functions and the Chinese brands move upmarket.

Then there is the line that embarrasses the forecast. IDC’s projection, as captured in the Statista bank, had smart rings reaching 3.2 million units in 2028. IDC’s own January 2026 count, reported by Bloomberg, put 2025 shipments at 4.3 million, up 49% in a single year. The ring beat its own 2028 forecast three years early. Oura alone sold about 3 million rings in 2025, more than half of the 5.5 million it has sold since 2015.

The ring won because it removed the two objections that always capped wearable adoption among people who don’t identify as athletes: it is not a screen on your wrist, and you forget it is there. A device people forget they are wearing gets worn every night. Data that gets collected every night is data a coach can actually use, and that is why the ring matters far beyond its 4 million units.

The newest IDC quarterly data adds a twist for anyone reading this from Europe or the US. In Q1 2025, global wrist-worn shipments grew 10.5% to 45.6 million, but the growth was Chinese: China’s wrist-worn market grew 37.6% on government subsidies, wristbands there grew 68%, and Huawei took the global number one spot ahead of Xiaomi and Apple. Western Europe and the US recovered, but the volume story of 2025 was a Chinese subsidy story.

Growth is decaying, and users have plateaued

Chart 4 is the one the device makers would rather you didn’t study. Smartwatch revenue grew 28.6% in 2019 and 35.0% in 2020. By 2023 it was 9.9%, and the forecast runs 8.6%, 7.6%, 7.0%, 6.5%, 6.3% out to 2028. Fitness-tracking wristwear follows the same curve a few points higher: 36.8% in 2020, 16.7% in 2024, 9.9% by 2028. These are still growth rates most industries would take, but the direction is unambiguous. The S-curve has bent.

Chart 5 shows why. Worldwide smartwatch users went from 149 million (2019) to 219 million (2023) and then stall: 224, 227, 228, 230, 231 million through 2028. That is 5% growth over five years, and smartwatch penetration sits at 2.9% of the world’s population from 2023 onward with no movement. Fitness-tracking wristwear users keep growing, from 261 million to 348 million, mostly because cheaper bands are still finding first-time buyers in Asia and Latin America. But the premium device, the one your clients wear, has found its ceiling.

Every subsequent chart in this report follows from that fact. If you cannot sell more watches, you sell more expensive watches, and then you sell what the watch produces.

The US proves it: flat users, rising price

The American market is the cleanest demonstration because Statista forecasts it in three dimensions. Chart 7 shows US users by segment: smartwatch users hit 42.7 million in 2023 and are forecast at 43.4 million in 2028, a 1.7% increase over five years. US smartwatch penetration peaks at 12.7% in 2024 and then edges down. Fitness bands still add users (26 million to 32 million), smart scales barely move (6.4 to 7.2 million).

Chart 6 shows revenue per user in the same period: smartwatches climb from $264 in 2020 to $301 in 2023 and $363 in 2028, a 37% increase. Bands sit at about $100 to $110, scales at $80 to $100. Put the two charts together and the arithmetic is stark. US smartwatch revenue grows from $12.9bn (2023) to $15.7bn (2028), up 22%, with the user base up under 2%. The entire growth of the largest wearable segment in the largest Western market is price.

What is in that price? More sensors (ECG, temperature, blood-oxygen, and now blood-pressure patterns), premium tiers, and increasingly a subscription. Apple’s FDA-cleared hypertension notification feature, launched in September 2025 across Series 9 and later and rolled out in 150-plus countries, is the clearest example of what the hardware upgrade cycle is now selling: not a better watch, but a new medical signal. Apple expects it to flag over a million people with possible undiagnosed high blood pressure in its first year.

For the US vendor picture, Statista’s 2023 estimate of the fitness-tracker market by vendor has Apple at 38% of revenue, Fitbit 16%, Garmin 11%, Samsung 7%, Amazfit and Fossil 5% each, Withings 3%. Among people who actually use a tracker, the brand question (chart 11) gives Apple a 58% share.

Who wears one: age, income, and the lapse rate

If you coach a general population, charts 8 to 10 are the ones to screenshot.

Country first (chart 8). Among adults aged 18 to 64 in March 2024, wearable use runs from 50% in India and 46% in China, through 42% in the UK, 37% in Sweden, 35% in Germany, 34% in South Korea and the Netherlands, to 32% in the US and Canada and 28% in Brazil. The two markets most coaches assume are the most tracked, the US and Germany, sit in the lower third. The UK is ten points ahead of both.

Demographics next (chart 9). In the US, use peaks at 35 to 44 (49%), is 40% among 18 to 34s, then falls to 29% at 45 to 64 and 25% over 65. Income is the stronger predictor: 25% of households under $50k use one, 42% between $50k and $100k, and 53% above $100k. Gender makes no difference at all (35% of women, 34% of men). So the client most likely to arrive with data is a 35 to 44-year-old with a six-figure household income, which is also the client most likely to pay for coaching. The 65-plus client, who often has the most to gain from recovery and blood-pressure tracking, is the least likely to have the device.

Then the number that should reframe how you think about all of this (chart 10). YouGov asked 1,015 American adults about ownership in June 2023. 45% had never owned a wearable. 34% owned one and used it. 15% owned one and did not use it. 12% had previously owned one and no longer had it. Add the last two: 27 out of every 61 people who ever bought a wearable, 44%, have stopped wearing it.

What do the active users do with the device? A Peloton survey of 1,013 Americans in September 2023 found wearable trackers were the single most-used piece of workout technology (43%), ahead of fitness apps (35%), nutrition apps (34%), recovery tools (29%) and online training platforms (23%). The tracker is already the default tool; the apps and platforms a coach might sell sit behind it. That ordering is worth remembering when you decide what to build your client experience around.

That is the biggest unpriced asset in the fitness industry. The device industry spent the marketing money to get a sensor onto 61% of American adults, and nearly half of those sensors are in drawers. Not because the hardware failed, but because the data had nobody to read it and no behaviour attached. A coach is the missing piece in that loop, and the client has already paid for the hardware.

Brand share is a country, not a guess

Chart 11 puts eight countries side by side. Apple is the most-used tracker brand in every one of them, but the margin varies enormously: 58% in the US, 46% in the UK, 41% in Sweden, 36% in the Netherlands, 35% in Germany, 33% in France, 27% in Italy, 25% in Spain. Below Apple, the map changes completely.

In the English-speaking markets, Fitbit is still second (27% US, 28% UK). In Germany and the Netherlands, Samsung is second at 22%. In France, Garmin and Samsung tie at 18%, and Garmin also holds 15% in Sweden: the endurance-sport brand is strongest where endurance sport is strongest. In Spain and Italy, the picture flips to the Chinese value brands: Xiaomi has 22% in Spain and 14% in Italy, Amazfit 13% and 15%. In Spain, Xiaomi plus Amazfit (35%) outweigh Apple (25%).

For a coach or a studio, this decides which platforms you integrate and which data exports you learn to read. In Berlin, support Apple Health, Samsung Health and Fitbit and you cover roughly 70% of tracked clients; add Garmin Connect and you are near 80%. In Madrid, the same three brands cover under 50%, and Xiaomi’s Mi Fitness is the second platform you need. The brand you personally wear is not a strategy.

One more data point on the apps side, because it shows where the money really sits: in January 2024 the top-grossing fitness and sport app worldwide was MyFitnessPal at $12.3M in a single month, followed by Strava ($5.7M), Peloton ($5.2M) and Lose It ($4.4M). The most-downloaded apps were fitpro, Da Fit and HryFine, the companion apps for white-label Chinese watches. Volume is at the bottom of the market; revenue is in the subscription that interprets the data.

Germany: fewer devices, more money each

The German market deserves its own section because it is the sharpest version of the thesis. Charts 12 and 13 come from GfK and gfu’s retail panels.

Units sold rose every year from 2.0 million (2015) to a peak of 7.36 million in 2021, then fell to 7.2 million in 2022 and 5.88 million in 2023, a 20% drop from the peak. Revenue tells a different story: €1.35bn in 2021, €1.46bn in 2022 and €1.45bn in 2023, essentially flat while volume fell by a fifth. Divide one by the other and the average device sold in Germany went from €184 in 2021 to €247 in 2023, a 34% rise in two years, and from €144 in 2016.

German buyers are not buying fewer wearables because they lost interest. They are replacing cheap bands with expensive watches and rings, and buying less often because the device lasts longer and does more. For a German studio, this means the client who walks in with a wearable in 2026 is more likely than ever to be carrying a premium device with a full sensor set, and more likely to be paying a subscription for it.

The UK offers the comparison: digital fitness and well-being device revenue of $1.38bn in 2023, forecast to reach $2.03bn in 2028, with users growing from 9.5 million to 11.2 million. Britain is still adding users; Germany is upgrading them.

The subscription layer is now the business

Everything above explains why the fastest-growing companies in wearables in 2025 were not the biggest device makers. They were the two that charge for interpretation.

Oura doubled revenue to $500M in 2024, projected $1bn for 2025 including app subscriptions, sold about 3 million rings in 2025, and raised more than $900M in October 2025 at an $11bn valuation, more than double its December 2024 valuation. Whoop, which sells no device at all, only a membership with a sensor included, raised $575M in March 2026 at $10.1bn, with 2.5 million members, bookings up 103% year on year, a $1.1bn bookings run rate, and a standard membership of $239 a year. Its investors now include Abbott and the Mayo Clinic.

Neither company competes with Apple on the wrist. They compete on the morning screen: the readiness score, the sleep stage breakdown, the strain target, the coaching nudge. That is a $239-a-year product built entirely on reading data the client generates while asleep. It is, in other words, the job a coach has always done, delivered by an algorithm with no human attached.

That is both the threat and the template. The threat is that your client’s recovery conversation moves to an app. The template is that people demonstrably pay a coaching subscription for interpretation, which is a far better business than selling them hardware. The operator who reads the Oura and Whoop numbers and concludes “I should sell rings” has it backwards. The right conclusion is “I should be the person who reads the ring.”

Where you stand

The benchmark above lets you place your own client book against the national figures. The honest baseline for a Western studio is 32 to 42%. If fewer than a quarter of your clients actively wear a tracker, you are below every surveyed market, including Brazil, and the lapse rate suggests a good share of them own one that is sitting unused. If more than half do, you have a tracked cohort that is more wearable-dense than any country on earth, and the question becomes whether you are doing anything with the data.

Two cautions on reading your number. First, count active wearers, not owners: the YouGov split shows the gap between the two is about 15 points. Second, if your book skews to the 35 to 44, six-figure-income client, expect to land above the national average without having done anything; that demographic is at 49 to 53% on its own.

What is still being tested

The live edge of this market is medical, not fitness. Apple’s hypertension notifications, cleared in September 2025 on a training set of over 100,000 people and a validation study of over 2,000, are the first mass-market wearable feature that will push a measurable number of people (Apple’s own estimate: over a million in year one) toward a doctor. Blood-pressure patterns, sleep apnea detection and, in the ring category, continuous temperature for cycle and illness tracking are where the next hardware cycle is being sold.

The open question for coaching is whether the subscription layer stays with the device makers or fragments. Whoop’s investors include a medical-device company and a hospital system; Oura’s include Fidelity and Iconiq. The capital is betting on the interpretation layer becoming healthcare infrastructure. The coach’s position in that stack is not yet claimed by anyone, which is why this report exists.

We update this report as the data lands. Every chart ships with its table and source, and the CSV and JSON are free to take.