The Global Market for Enterprise Wearables

Inside this Report

This report covers the overall market opportunity for the following enterprise wearable form factors: smart glasses, hand and wrist-mounted computers/scanners, and voice enabled solutions (including voice-driven dedicated hardware and related software ecosystem). This report includes market sizing and forecasts for each category across its industry and regional markets. Additionally, this report analyzes and breaks down current macro trends and enterprise customer requirements and barriers affecting investments in hand and wrist-mounted computers, smart glasses, and voice enabled solutions.

What Questions are Addressed?

• What is the current outlook for the enterprise wearable solutions market?
• What is the relative opportunity by wearable form factor, industry, and application environment?
• What are the primary solution requirements by industry and application environment for each wearable form factor and its respective target use cases? How do end users measure success and what are the most relevant KPIs?
• How have the wearable hand and wrist-mounted computers/scanners, smart glasses, and voice enabled solution segments evolved from a technology point of view?
• What are the latest competitive developments across enterprise wearable competitors?
• Which vendors lead their respective markets and different segments of their markets?
• What impact will AI and increased automation have on the opportunity for enterprise wearable solutions?

Who Should Read this Report?

The target audience for this report includes decision-makers within marketing, product development, and sales/business development roles at wearable hardware OEMs as well as related system integrators, value- added resellers, and distributors. In addition, end users within enterprise mobility purchasing, specification, and/or support responsibilities will benefit from reading this report.

Organizations Listed in this Report:

Executive Summary

The rapid evolution of enterprise wearables, defined by VDC Research as smart glasses/wearable displays, hand-worn/wrist mounted computers/scanners, and voice-enabled wearable solutions deployed in warehousing/logistics, retail, manufacturing, field service, healthcare, and public safety, has seen many success stories and just as many failures. Wearables have the potential to transform operations by enabling frontline mobile workers to complete their daily tasks hands free, but OEMs must navigate challenges in perfecting their form factors in a complex landscape. Wearables have always faced a compromise between form, fit, and function, especially in the smart glasses/wearable display segment. The devices must be light and ergonomic to ensure comfort and prevent health risks associated with all day use but must also contain the battery life and processing power to carry out their functions over the same period. Microsoft's HoloLens, which saw little deployment beyond the U.S Army struggled to achieve this balance and shut down after waves of negative feedback. Demonstrating ROI that justifies a substantial investment is another challenge that Apple is yet to overcome with the Apple Vision Pro. When the "right" form factor is achieved, the benefits are obvious. The fundamental wearable solution value proposition around handsfree operations solves many of the labor-related challenges facing organizations today. Production time, the top KPI for fast paced industries dominated by frontline workers is optimized thanks to wearables' inherent drop security. Vendors are closing in on finding the perfect balance between device size and performance, particularly in the hand-worn/wrist-mounted category. Advancements in AI and voice technology will accelerate the voice-based category in the coming years, and while smart glasses and wearable displays are currently used in more niche cases, adoption will eventually grow thanks to releases from tech industry giants.

Key Findings:

• The global market for Enterprise Wearables Solutions reached $417 million in 2024 and is expected to achieve $603.6 million in 2029 at a CAGR of 7.7%. The smart glasses/wearable display segment reached $92.2 million in 2024 and is expected to achieve $166.1 million in 2029 at a CAGR of 12.5%. The hand-worn/wrist mounted segment reached $191.2 million in 2024 and is expected to achieve $245.8 million in 2029 at a CAGR of 5.1%. The voice-enabled segment reached $133.6 million in 2024 and is expected to achieve $191.7 million in 2029 at a CAGR of 7.5%.
• Use cases for wearable enterprise solutions continue to proliferate. From warehouse workers supporting high volume picking or sortation workflows to field service workers connecting via remote assist applications and retail associates supporting BOPIS and curbside checkout, enterprises are looking for solutions that are unobtrusive and can improve productivity, reduce errors, and enhance worker safety in increasingly challenging labor environments. Organizations are reporting between 10-30% improvement in productivity metrics for many of their wearable solution investments.
• Solution providers are focusing on ease of integration and ease of adoption to simplify technology deployment, employee training, and onboarding. This is especially evident for wearable voice solutions that have notoriously been a challenge to deploy. Examples of this are Honeywell's Pick Up and Go and Connector solutions allowing for more seamless onboarding of workers on wearable voice solutions that previously required significant training. The future of voice solution integration includes generative AI models capable of better understanding and producing natural language without specific programming. Models can be trained on internal material, guidebooks or instruction manuals, or unique sets of data for more specified outputs. According to a recent VDC Research survey, time to value is a key challenge when piloting/evaluating new solutions, making ease of integration and adoption a key consideration for organizations investing in wearables.
• The wrist/hand-worn wearable computing and scanning segment has evolved significantly with the introduction of lighter-weight and more ergonomic solutions. The design of wearable solution is inherently an act of compromise. The most successful solutions have typically been single-purpose solutions tied to a specific application or use case. The articulation of that use case has often been one of the greatest challenges for vendors looking to commercialize their wearable solutions. Issues like user safety, comfort, ergonomics, and hygiene need to be clearly addressed. Balancing battery life with performance, or in the case of wrist-worn computers, display size with weight, while removing any cabling that could represent a safety hazard are critical requirements. The emergence of glove and top of hand mounted devices from vendors like ProGlove are redefining what wearable productivity tools can look like, and the company's success has proven their effectiveness. Due to glove and top of hand mounted devices' limited UI, there is still an opportunity to pair wrist mounted mobile computers with the form factor.
• Hardware modularity is becoming an increasingly important competitive element across wearable solutions. This is most prominent within the smart glasses category but spans all segments. Smart glasses, like many body-worn solutions, are frequently shared devices, making hygiene a critical factor in their design. With heightened attention on the health and safety of shared mobile devices from a sanitization and disinfecting perspective, hardware modularity is one route to manage concerns rather than investing in 1-to-1 deployments for each frontline mobile worker. Modular straps and other user-specific components allow for personalization while maintaining shared device efficiency. Triggers and mounting elements typically cost a fraction of a wearable computer or scanner, and the ability to swap these elements for each worker's use while leveraging the same computing and power sources helps reduce deployment expenses. Besides health concerns, modularity also helps keep investments relevant for a longer time period for smart glasses in particular-the lifecycle for cameras and displays changes and improves at a faster rate than the whole solution, so modularity around those components is a competitive differentiator that ensures long-term relevancy for smart glass investments rather than requiring a complete overhaul every few years.
• Voice is slowly emerging as the next-gen hands-free communication interface for enterprise wearables. Advances in AI and voice agents are making conversational voice solutions a reality, enabling more natural and intuitive interactions between frontline workers and devices. From a person-to-person or person-to-team perspective, organizations are looking to consolidate technologies beyond traditional push-to-talk, reducing reliance on dedicated radios while enhancing efficiency. The displacement of legacy walkie-talkies or paging systems in retail stores and hospitality environments by wearable voice clients from vendors like Quail Digital, VoCoVo, Theatro, and others is driving new levels of productivity, collaboration, communication, and enhanced customer service. Theatro's recent acquisition by Motorola Solutions indicates that voice solutions are more ready than ever to integrate into the greater enterprise technology ecosystem. As voice recognition and AI-driven assistants continue to evolve, hands-free voice solutions will play a critical role in streamlining workflows across industries.
• The head-worn segment of the market - comprised of smart glasses and XR/VR headsets continues to confound vendors and their partners/customers with most solutions not sufficiently mature to deliver significant value. While vendors such as RealWear and XYZ Reality have found success with specialized solutions primarily used in field service and construction respectively, other use cases have not seen widespread adoption. Smart glasses solutions, including vision-based picking applications and the Microsoft Hololens used by the US Army for situational awareness, have fallen short of expectations. Poor performance, user discomfort, and the high solution cost contributed to the cancellation or postponement of many of these opportunities, representing significant challenges that vendors still need to overcome.
• Whether developing in-house or collaborating with partners, OEMs are increasingly expanding their wearable portfolios with software solutions. Software adds value to wearable solutions by enhancing efficiency and allowing frontline workers to use solutions more intuitively. Recently prevalent are conversational AI solutions that can offer and receive instructions in multiple languages. In some cases, software acts to automate wearable solutions, recognizing when barcodes need to be scanned without requiring a trigger pull, as one example. It's also extremely valuable for companies from a data collection perspective as wearables are worn all day and are integral to repetitive processes and workflows. Customers looking to invest in wearables will likely have their own internal software, so a key consideration for OEMs is ensuring their software is compatible with customer's preexisting platforms.