Wearable technology will account for 0.5% smartphone traffic in 2018
An estimated 177 million wearable devices will be sold by 2018, research from Cisco has found, but the wearable technology sector will still only account for half a per cent of smartphone traffic.
The research suggested that the wearable technology market, which led to a lot of discussions at this year's CES in Las Vegas, will be worth an estimated $30bn by 2018, with products such as Google Glass and the Samsung Galaxy Gear playing a role in this.
Global traffic from wearable devices will account for 0.4 per cent of total mobile data traffic by 2018, compared to 0.1 per cent at the end of 2013, Cisco suggests.
Smartphones are set to see a further rise, the research predicted, with consumers in the US to download and upload more data on their smartphones in 2018 than they did on their laptops in 2013.
Technology analysts Jupiter Research suggested in December that there may still be social and legal barriers which will inhibit adoption of wearable technology, with privacy being a big issue.