The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has released unit and sales growth projections for six major emerging technologies. The forecast envisions strong growth in unit sales of virtual reality devices, along with impressive revenue increases for smart home devices and drones, among others.
The following lists some highlights from CTA’s projections.
Unit Sales
Of the 6 emerging technologies examined, the wearables market is the most mature, with an expected 48 million in unit sales this year.
The smart home device market is the next-largest, with a projected 27 million unit sales this year, followed by the 4K UHD TV (17 billion) market.
Meanwhile, some 11 million digital assistant devices such as Amazon’s Echo and Google Home are expected to ship this year.
Virtual reality (VR) devices (5 million) and drones (3 million) represent a more nascent market.
Unit Sales Growth
The wearables market – the largest of those tracked – is expected to see comparatively slow growth this year, with just a 9% increase in unit sales.
By comparison, several other emerging technologies are expected to see unit sales growth of at least 50%.
The fastest-growing of these are VR devices, with a projected 79% increase in unit sales this year. That’s followed by 4K UHD TVs (+59%), digital assistant devices (+53%), and smart home (+50%) devices.
Revenues & Revenue Growth
By far the largest market by revenues, 4K UHD TV revenues this year are expected to gross $14.6 billion, representing a 45% increase year-over-year.
The 4K UHD TV market is almost 3 times larger in dollar sales than the next-biggest, the wearables market, which is expected to hit $5.6 billion in revenues this year.
Smart home devices, meanwhile, are projected to see the fastest growth in revenues, up 48% year-over-year to $3.3 billion.
Revenue projections for the other emerging technologies are as follows:
- Digital assistant devices: $1.3 billion (+22%);
- Virtual reality devices: $1.3 billion (+43%); and
- Drones: $1.1 billion (+44%).
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