Apple Watch Market Projected to Worth $16.5 Billion by 2020: Analyst

Sales of the highly anticipated Apple Watch may not be as high as some analysts expect, but this year’s launch put the company in the right position to grab a significant share of a wearables market worth $16.5 billion, reports analyst firm Ovum (via ZDNet).

Apple watch

According to their estimates, Apple will ship roughly 10 million Watch units this year, accounting for about a fifth of the total wearables shipments projected by the firm for 2015. Ovum believes manufacturers will ship a total of 50 million wearables, more than doubling last year’s 24 million units.

By 2020, the firm expects wearables to reach 394 million units, an annual growth rate of 60%, and predict that revenue from “multipurpose” wearables such as the Apple Watch to account for 62.3% of the $26.6 billion total wearable revenue that year. This means, that Apple may be bidding on a market worth $16.5 billion a year with its wearable.

“Apple is not likely to take 100% of the watch market in value (we only consider high-end smart watches here, not smart bands with screens) but it’s not uncommon for Apple to grab 80 percent or 90 percent market share quite easily, quite quickly, for example with tablets and high-end smartphones,” de Renesse told ZDNet by email.

“I would expect Apple to sell around 10m smart watches in 2015, generating in excess of $3.5bn,” he added.

As Tim Cook said during the Q1 2015 earnings call, the Apple Watch is on track to ship in April. Will you be in line to get one?

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