The domestic wearables market is expected to grow by an average of 3.5% annually.
Earwear accounts for over 70% of the market, higher than wrist-worn devices.
Hyper-personalized services are expected to collaborate with healthcare and fashion industries.


On the 10th, Korea IDC announced that the domestic wearable market is expected to record a compound annual growth rate (CARG) of 3.5% over the next five years, reaching a total of 15.15 million units in 2025.


Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the domestic wearables market grew 1.5 times year-on-year, fueled by the spread of online contact culture. Driven by heightened interest in healthcare and growing consumer demand for audio and video content, the market is expected to maintain robust growth throughout the forecast period.

By product, earwear is expected to show robust growth, with a CAGR of 3.9% over the next five years, surpassing watches and bands. Its share of the overall wearables market is projected to steadily increase from 73.6% in 2020 to 75.0% in 2025.

Earwear is expected to go beyond simply delivering digital content, including audio and video, to offer innovative features like health coaching and smart assistants, offering new experiences across users' lives. In particular, active noise cancellation, a key feature for calls and content consumption, is expected to be a key growth driver.

Wrist-worn products, including watches and bands, are expected to maintain a 25% share of the overall wearables market and continue to grow. The improved readability of information on the display and the convenience of multitasking while freeing up one's hands are expected to be its strengths.

Wristbands, with their low prices, are expected to grow at a slightly higher average annual rate of 2.6%, compared to watches, which are projected to grow at a rate of 2.1%. Watches are expected to continue their growth through various use cases, including smartwatches, hybrid watches, and monitoring watches.

Kim Hye-rim, a senior researcher at IDC Korea, said, “We need to pay attention to the evolution of services and content that complement wearable devices,” and added, “Recently, the combination of home training subscription services, including Apple Fitness Plus, and wearable devices is enhancing customer experience by providing customized content through user data collection.”

Additionally, he stated, “In the future, wearables will provide hyper-personalized services by combining accumulated data with real-time user biometric information,” and “The wearable market will continue to expand based on improved customer loyalty and collaboration with related industries such as healthcare and fashion.”