Smartwatches only represent 11% of wearables, with activity trackers proving more popular
Health and fitness activity trackers account for 39 per cent of the wearables market in the UK, accounting for 163,000 of the wearables sold between January and August 2014, GfK research has found.
The research found that 420,000 wearable units worth £51m were sold in the UK, with only 11 per cent of these being smartwatches.
The report suggested that the reason that smartwatches had not sold as well as other types of wearables - including action cameras, headsets and glasses (which accounted for 99,500 or 24 per cent of sales) – was that they are still viewed as "gadgets for geeks" that do not have a clear function.
A survey of 1,000 smartphone owners by GfK found that 69 per cent would instead be interested in clothes or jewellery with integrated activity trackers, with bracelets (33 per cent) and shoes (26 per cent) ranking the highest.
It was also discovered that almost half (47 per cent) prefer to buy an activity tracker from a well-known technology company rather than a retailer in the fashion, luxury or sports categories.
This comes as Nike chief executive Mark Parker hinted that the company was again teaming with Apple to make a wearable that had ‘more stealth’.