The Middle East and Africa (MEA) wearables market continued to see steady growth in Q3 2016, according to IDC. The firm said that the Middle East and Africa (MEA) wearables market grew 38.3% year on year in Q3 2016 to total approximately 487,000 units. The growth is being driven by low-cost basic wearables (i.e., devices that do not support third-party applications), which grew 55.9% year on year, while shipments of smart wearables (i.e., devices that do support third-party applications) increased 4.1% over the same period.
IDC expects the MEA wearables market to total 1.96 million units for 2016 as a whole, which represents an increase of 38.4% on 2015. Looking ahead, the market is tipped to grow a further 22.6% in 2017 to reach 2.4 million units for the year. The uptake of wearables has been relatively slow in MEA when compared to other regions, so there is still plenty of room for adoption and continued steady growth over the coming years. New product launches in the earwear and clothing categories will also fuel further growth.
