IDTechEx Forecast the Wearable Sensors Market to Reach US$7.2B by 2035

Wearable sensors are fundamental to continuously monitoring health, fitness, and wellness and are at the core of innovations for next-generation human-machine interfaces, industrial IoT, and extended reality. As wearable technology applications grow, there are increasing opportunities for sensors that can detect more advanced metrics, be integrated into novel form factors, offer enhanced performance, or demand less power and space.

More people than ever are turning to wearable sensors in the quest for ‘the quantified self’. Despite its origin in simple step counting, the market for wearable sensors is expanding into the more complex arena of health monitoring.

Innovations in wearable sensor technology are expanding the range of biometrics accessible through watches and skin patches. This addresses the rising demand for remote patient monitoring, decentralized clinical trials, and increasing consumer expectations. This includes more straightforward access to health data and extends further to sensor integration into headsets and accessories for immersive AR/VR experiences.

Motion Sensors and Optical Sensors Find Applications Beyond Activity Tracking

Motion sensing hardware is well established, with accelerometers integrated into almost every wearable. Therefore, as manufacturers' profit margins diminish with commoditization, expanding the application space or reducing sensor footprint and cost to retain market share is crucial.

Moreover, smart-watch wearers are familiar with the red and green lights on the back of their devices. These lights are used to obtain heart-rate data or blood oxygen and are further analyzed to gain insights into calorie burn, VO2 max, and sleep quality.

Yet sensor developers are interested in pushing the boundaries of what can be measured noninvasively with light, whether through new software to analyze photoplethysmography (PPG) signals or new hardware for spectroscopy.

Wearable Electrodes Can Bring New Human-Machine Interfacing Capabilities to Consumers

Incorporating conductive materials into wearable technology is a simple concept. However, it has led to a wide variety of wearable sensors, including wet electrodes stuck on the skin to measure the heart, dry electrodes in headphones to analyze brain signals, and microneedles within skin patches to quantify muscle movements.

As such, this also creates a broad application space for electrodes ranging from vital sign monitoring and sleep analysis for healthcare to emotional response and stress tracking for marketing and productivity.

In recent years, the potential for novel human-machine interfacing, and even brain-computer interfacing, has put wearable electrode solutions further into the spotlight – with opportunities for integration into the AR and assistive technology solutions growing in interest to many.

Chemical Sensors Offer a Less Invasive Route to Glucose and Hydration Monitoring

Chemical sensors increasingly enable people with diabetes to monitor their glucose levels without finger pricks. Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) have hugely disrupted the type-1 diabetes management market, and now the technology providers are set on expanding into type-2 and even mass consumer markets.

Beyond this, innovations in measuring more metrics, indeed non-invasively, also continue, with the commercialization of sweat sensors for hydration analysis ramping up in adoption levels in the last few years. 

Conclusions and Market Outlook

Overall, the technology landscape within the wearable sensor market is diversifying. Established sensors, where reducing size, cost, and power will always offer an advantage, can provide opportunities for innovation and disruption, while new sensors can unlock exciting new applications.

Based on over a decade of research, IDTechEx’s recent “Wearable Sensors Market 2025-2035: Technologies, Trends, Players, Forecasts” report provides insight into how wearable sensors could be integrated into society in the long term and forecasts the market to reach US$7.2 billion by 2035.