Rings, watches, bands, oh my!

Wearable devices that track wellness data proceed to achieve traction — Oura is valued at $2.55 billion, in keeping with the corporate; 50 million consumers used an Apple Watch in November 2022, in keeping with a Pymnts report, and a recent ring, Evie from Movano Health, is ready to launch this fall.

McKinsey cites wearables as a key area throughout the wellness category, estimating it to be a $10 billion to $15 billion market within the U.S. and growing in double digits year-over-year, with a 40 to 50 percent penetration rate. Consumer adoption continues to extend, likely as a consequence of post-pandemic wellness trends, experts say.

“Consumers couldn’t go to the doctor or the hospital for a time period,” said Anna Pione, a partner at McKinsey and coleader of the firm’s global research on the long run of wellness. “Throughout the pandemic, we just saw an actual acceleration of it, partly by need, partly by consumers having more of this awareness of their very own health and wellness… [With] fitness and general health and wellness, consumers are pretty glad with the offerings that they’ve today.”

While the category continues to speed up, there may be room for opportunity, in keeping with experts, especially in the case of the nutrition segment and more specific use cases like women’s health, elder care and chronic conditions. 

“There’s real potential to proceed scaling,” said Pione. “Food plan and nutrition…offerings just aren’t quite there in the marketplace yet, but the patron demand is big.”

With this, Pione pointed to technology like continuous glucose monitors because the principal option in the marketplace now for nutrition, though she expects brands to research more seamless, pain-free options for automated tracking on this space. But continuous glucose monitors, like Nutrisense, have gained traction as they permit users to trace blood sugar levels in real time and adjust eating habits and other behaviors. 

“Our core base after we first began was biohackers,” said Nutrisense senior nutrition manager Carlee Hayes. “We’ve seen that shift to a more broad, general lay audience over the past 4 years… This technology and the flexibility to make those long-term behavior changes is reaching everyone now.”

Continuous glucose monitors pose several barriers for consumers, nevertheless, as they require inserting a needle into the arm, require a prescription and will be pricey. With increased interest, experts say the device will likely develop into more accessible in the long run.

“Consumers like the continual nature of those [continuous glucose monitors],” said Pione. “The value point is certainly quite high. If that starts to return down, you’ll see more adoption… I imagine they are going to develop into cheaper and more accessible.”

Evie, which retails for $269 from Movano Health, is a recent ring expected to launch in November entirely focused on the ladies’s health segment — it should provide data around menstrual cycles, health metrics, sleep quality and activity. With this, the brand has positioned itself as a health care wearable, because it is a medical grade device following Food and Drug Administration standards.

“We wish to take it to the following level. We wish to integrate a health care lens to all of it,” said Movano Health chief executive officer John Mastrototaro, noting the brand plans to integrate with health care systems for patient management. “Women have often been underserved in health care… It was high time to develop a wearable solution specifically for girls.”

While the product — which can not require a subscription, per consumer feedback — hasn’t launched yet, the brand has collected greater than 80,000 emails of individuals interested by trying the ring upon launch.

Oura has also tapped into the ladies’s health segment through its partnership with Natural Cycles, where users are capable of use their ring to trace their temperature and in turn their fertility status. This partnership is indicative of two key strategies at Oura: addressing women’s health and providing multidimensional health data for consumers to learn more about their physiology over time.

“We wish to maneuver from just one dimension of your health and wellness,” said Oura CEO Tom Hale. “It’s going to be pretty interesting to take into consideration the way you start to have a look at those more holistically and also you start to have a look at them across an extended time period… Women’s health [is] such an interesting place for people to do passive tracking because if you’ve gotten a cycle, and understanding different stages of that cycle and the way you are feeling and the way your scores reflect within the cycle, there’s a number of learning for people to do there.”

With Oura’s success and Evie’s entrance into the market, more rings are expected. Fitbit, Samsung and Apple have all filed for patents for smart rings. Pione of McKinsey said one in every of the most important drivers for rings is the battery life — only requiring to be charged every few days. Subsequently, brands with other modalities may look into expanding battery life, as Whoop has done with its band — the Whoop 4.0 battery lasts 4 to 5 days and comes with a conveyable charger so the wearer never has to take off the device.

While experts expect recent offerings to shake up the market, pioneers within the space are continually trying to update their tech and higher engage with consumers. For instance, Oura responded to the social wellness trend by creating Circles, which allows ring wearers to hitch groups and react to 1 one other’s wellness data. Since launching the Apple Watch, the brand has expanded its tracking capabilities to incorporate custom workouts, crash detection, an array of mindfulness offerings and more.

The emphasis on mental well-being resonates across the wellness category and particularly with wearables in the case of the effect of stress on sleep. Whoop recently added stress indicators to its band; Hale of Oura calls it a key area of the category to concentrate to, and Apollo, a touch sensor device, detects a user’s stress and provides vibrations to calm the nervous system.

“The true unlock with Whoop members is starting to truly quantify how much stress they’re incurring outside of activity throughout the day and the way that pertains to sleep at night,” said Kristen Holmes, Whoop vice chairman of performance science and principal scientist, noting consumers are connecting the dots between data and behavior change. “There’s a knowledge point for somebody to be like, ‘Oh, wow, OK. I want to truly be more proactive in managing my stress throughout the day.’”

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