By
Mayowa Adebajo
April 10th, 2024
The Samsung Electronics vice president said that with the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns, people are often buying smartwatches with health-related functions and monitoring.
Samsung Electronics is seeing a major uptick in its wearable devices business in 2020. Speaking to CNBC, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (KRX: 005930) senior vice president Taejong Jay Yang said that the company’s global wearables sales have surged by 30% this year.
More and more people are buying Samsung wearable devices to monitor their health. The Samsung chief executive admits that the Coronavirus pandemic has got more people to stay health-conscious. Thus, wearable products help them keep a check on their health. Speaking at the East Tech West Conference, Yang said:
“Although a majority of consumers plan to spend less this year due to the pandemic, wearable device sales have grown by 30% or more compared to last year. What this data indicates is that even when millions of consumers are re-evaluating their spending habits, they continue to prioritize wearable technology products over others. Samsung will continue to invest in these advanced technologies.”
Tech giants are giving huge attention to the healthcare industry as they see great long-term potential. Almost all the players in the wearables market have tuned their devices for monitoring health-related data. As per market research firm IDTechEx, the global wearables market is likely to grow to $70 billion. Within healthcare – fitness, medical, and wellness are the key driving areas.
Competing with Giants Like Apple, Google and Amazon
When it comes to smartwatches and fitness bands, Samsung Electronics is directly competing with giants like Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL), Google LLC (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL), and Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN). Over the last three years, the smartwatch market has become immensely competitive while doubling in size to $13 billion now.
Almost all of these companies have smartwatches that feature healthcare-related data and tracking. Yang said that health is a “key strength” for its wearables devices business. With the “data collected we can create a lot of great services and products for consumers to help them live healthier lives,” he added.
Earlier this year, Samsung Electronics launched its Galaxy Watch 3. It comes with smart features like sleep monitoring, blood pressure monitoring, and blood oxygen monitoring. Yang noted that Samsung will continue to form partnerships with healthcare firms to improve its devices.
In September 2020, Apple released its Apple Watch Series 6 that also comes with health features like an ECG app and blood oxygen monitoring. Besides, e-commerce and tech giant Amazon also announced its Halo Band Activity tracker along with a smart health subscription.