New Entrants Shake Up Screenless Wearables Market and Diversify Away from Traditional Smartwatches

In the past 6 weeks, between May and June 2026, three unique launches dominated wearable industry headlines—Google’s debut screenless wearable in the Fitbit Air; Amazfit’s refreshed and upgraded Helio Strap Pro; and the Oura Ring 5. These three products demonstrate an undeniable trend that has been shaping 2026 thus far: that the wearable device industry is fragmenting away from the wrist-centric, screen-first smartwatch as its organizing form factor, and toward a portfolio of purpose-built body-worn sensors such as rings, screenless bands, and waist/arm pods. Each of these products has been purpose-built and specifically marketed for its intended use in passive 24/7 health intelligence, recovery, or movement-quality analysis. Fitbit Air and Helio Strap Pro seek to continually challenge the market dominance of the incumbent leader, WHOOP, and its subscription-based health-monitoring model.

Since the start of the year, multiple new wearable form factors have emerged, driven particularly by vendors' push for “Personal Artificial Intelligence (AI).” New AI wearable form factors, such as pendants, earbuds, and other devices, have appeared in concept prototypes from market movers like Qualcomm, Lenovo, and Samsung, which articulate their vision of the future of wearable devices. This evolution of wearables rests on the vision that multiple devices can share information and compute among themselves, enabling stronger data-driven insights into their users through newer wearable form factors.

This form factor diversification away from traditional smartwatches is largely demand-driven, as consumer interest in data-driven biometrics and health indicators has grown over the past few years. This increase in mainstream consumer-led interest largely relies on two consumer pain points that the smartwatch structurally cannot satisfy. First, the screen is increasingly regarded as a liability instead of a feature designed for passive tracking. Google’s launch of the Fitbit Air pitches around the sentiment of a screenless design built to live in the moment, allowing users to explore insights in the app when they want, without notifications and a distracting screen, allowing smart rings and screenless pucks to circumvent the smartwatch’s defining attribute. Second, the form factor governs wear consistency, and the consistency governs data quality. Oura, Fitbit, Amazfit, and WHOOP’s defining selling point is their truly 24/7 wearability during activities, sleep, and daily life, enabling long-term data collection that yields more reliable insights, such as Heart Rate Variability (HRV), with significantly less noise.

Technologically, sensor and battery maturation in wearables innovation cycles that measure Optical Heart Rate (OHR), SpO2, skin temperature, and HRV sensing are now good enough to fit in a ring or coin-sized pebble, allowing for screenless wearables to remove the screen form factor that significantly saves battery consumption, extending battery usage to up to 40 days in some wearables. Additionally, healthcare cost economics are driving prevention infrastructure into the consumer market, as consumers use smart sensors as a low-cost front-end indicator of biometrics and health signals as a prevention layer.

However, this does not signal that screenless wearables will be the mainstream or dominant form factor for smart wearables soon; rather, it is an emerging category that could become a mainstay in the market. These screenless wearables should be regarded as disruptors in the wearables market, where smartwatches remain the dominant category among all consumer-shipped wearables. ABI Research estimates that the global wearables market stands at 382 million shipments in 2025, with smartwatches and smart rings accounting for 37% and 0.82%, respectively. The smart rings subcategory of wearables is also projected to reach 24 million in 2031, growing at a 40% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR).

Over the past 4 years, leading wearable companies in the screenless technology space, such as WHOOP and Oura, have demonstrated a significant Total Addressable Market (TAM) for non-smartwatch wearables. Their explosive growth and marketing strategy have carefully measured and curated their products, starting with an intended market and then transitioning to the fringes of the target audience. Incumbents like WHOOP have built a subscription-gated, Intellectual Property (IP)-defended, athlete-validated position that has begun to expand to suit mainstream amateur athletes’ and fitness enthusiasts’ interests in 24/7 passive tracking metrics. Expansion and the influx of competitors seeking to enter this market are inevitable and welcome. However, new vendors looking to compete in this space must find strategies to circumvent industry incumbents and carve out market share in a niche industry.

First, vendors will undoubtedly have to follow Amazfit Helio Strap, Fitbit Air, and Polar Loop’s playbook in some capacity: lead adoption with a no-subscription or free-base model that turns incumbents like WHOOP and Oura’s margin engine into a potential weakness. The expensive yearly subscription to access metrics from screenless wearables is now the device category’s biggest source of friction. While software subscription models are common in virtually all market segments today, consumers of wearables are increasingly sensitive to purchasing expensive recurring subscription costs after already paying for their hardware. A new entrant to the screenless wearables space should make the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) over a 2 to 3-year horizon its headline number, rather than just a spec sheet. The device should also not gate core metrics, as the goodwill of a usable free base is worth more than the near-term revenue gains.

Second, entrants should look to win a vertical beachhead before attacking the general market “for all.” Specific collaborations, partnerships, and intended use cases will be key factors in driving marketing and carving out market share. A model like Amazfit’s, partnering with HYROX, targets a specific segment of a globally popular fitness competition. Amazfit’s Helio Strap Pro’s play is to own a specific, fast-growing, underserved use case (hybrid training) with a metric no incumbent provides (per-station muscular load), validated at the sport's flagship event. Other specific market segments explored include women’s health, post-surgery recovery, and occupational fatigue. This strategy to build a metric that other wearables do not currently have allows for a defensible niche metric with a stronger long-term market wedge than an all-around improved metric system in the device.

Lastly, new entrants should explore and compete in openness and interoperability, even in largely walled markets. Oura and WHOOP run closed, vertically integrated stacks, and smartphone leaders like Samsung and Apple keep their ecosystems tight. A new entrant, like Amazfit, can differentiate its product by offering a feature that plays with everything, utilizing built-in real-time Bluetooth® sharing with third-party sports watches and applications like Apple Health. This position’s openness, as a feature, can be a selling point for serious users who already own other hardware and want to avoid lock-in.

These factors can significantly increase a new entrant’s desire to break into an increasingly crowded and popular market. As wearables, whether used actively in smartwatches or passively in screenless trackers, become mainstream biometric trackers that live alongside smartphones, the category will undoubtedly look to expand its TAM and Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) in the coming years.