1 in 4 wearables sold this year will be Apple Watches

published 19 February 2015

An industry report titled 'Market Forecast: Wearables Worldwide 2014 - 2018' reckons that Apple Watch is going to own 2015...

As you might imagine from the title, it's a real page-turner. But we know you're busy people, so we've taken the liberty of reading it on your behalf.

Now, your first reaction may be that 25% of all wearables still might not be that many sales - wearables are flying off the shelves, but very few of them are good enough to bring back repeat customers, and smartwatches up to now have been a very mixed bag.

But get this - the report reckons Apple will have sold 20 million Apple Watches by the end of 2015. A quick bit of maths tells you that we're looking at around 80 million wearable devices sold this year, but only 29 million were sold in 2014. And that is an enormous explosion in wearable-mania.

Admittedly, as the report states, the Apple Watch will be a catalyst for sales, but that's still asking for a massive amount of growth, and we're not sure why the release of the Apple Watch would directly make people go out and buy other devices. For wearables to reach the estimated 2018 target of 172 million - that's one hundred and seventy two million devices sold - the Apple Watch will have to be at the very least, exceptionally good, and possibly even borderline magical.

Still, the year is young, and there is a lot of ground to tread. LG has already announced a champion in the Watch Urbane, but Mobile World Congress will tell us a huge amount about the Apple Watch's competition.

And it's worth bearing in mind that last time a similar report came out - in August 2014 - it underestimated wearable sales in 2014 by 7 million units. In essence, you can read all of this any way you like. There's plenty of reason to be sceptical, but are you ready to bet against Apple?

Pete started his fledging journalistic career covering lifestyle tech and video games for T3, before a brief sojourn in food turned into a full time career as a chef, recipe developer and editor with the likes of Great British Chefs, BBC Food and SquareMeal. Over a decade later he has come full circle, putting kitchen tech and appliances through rigorous testing for T3 once again, and eating a quite intense number of omelettes whilst testing non-stick pans. In his spare time Pete loves nothing more than squashing his size 11 feet into tiny shoes and going climbing. He also dabbles in cricket writing from time to time, and is certainly a man who knows his leg from his wicket.