It’s estimated the market for wearable electronic devices, along with apps and services for sports fitness and personal health, is worth $1.6 billion worldwide in 2015. This market category is expected to rise to $5 billion in 2016 with companies incorporating sensors into sportswear, casual apparel, shoes, balls, rackets, clubs, goggles and helmets. Collecting and analyzing all this exogenous data from these intelligent personal devices and accessories presents a huge opportunity for IBM Cloud, Big Data, Watson and Watson Health for the development of Cognitive Coaches and Watson Personalized Services. One prominent sportswear company is currently interacting with 120 million users. Their users logged 100 million unique workouts entries in January of 2015 alone, making them uniquely positioned to transform the new digital consumer, athlete, and team sport categories. In the near future, we will begin to see these companies and new start-ups introduce real-time pattern-of-performance (PoP) services for individuals powered by next generation Apps developed on IBM Bluemix with IBM Watson APIs.
Thoughts from the Great Lakes Cloud Advisors 