CGM Players’ Strategic Engagement with Wearable Ecosystems

These partnerships reflect the shift toward integrating CGM data with wearables and personalised health platforms. The multi-year collaboration between Google Health and Abbott’s Lingo, announced in August 2026, bridges clinical and real-world sensor data by combining CGM, wearable, laboratory and survey data. Similarly, Senseonics brings data from implantable CGM, twiist automated insulin delivery system and Apple Health/Google Health into its Eversense 365 application. Such integrations make critical health features more acceptable, stylish, and seamlessly integrated into daily life, with a slow transition from reactive, episode-based monitoring towards more predictive and real-time preventive care.

CGM is mainly used by diabetic patients, especially the insulin-dependent population (Type I diabetes), with growing sensor wear times. As continuous monitoring enables improved glucose management, device adoption is expanding towards higher-risk populations across non-insulin and pre-diabetic consumers, as well as GLP-1 therapy users seeking better weight management. The launch of OTC (over-the-counter) devices is further extending CGM into health-conscious consumers. Higher adoption across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific regions has been supported by insurance coverage across private and government payers, and strategic integration with Automated Insulin Delivery (AID) systems (Tandem, Insulet, and Beta Bionics). Among others, India, Latin America and the Middle East are witnessing gradual growth due to limited affordable options and slow transition from Blood Glucose Monitoring devices. With the introduction of implantable devices and two-in-one biosensing devices, the global CGM market’s revenue is expected to grow at a 7% CAGR from 2026 to 2032, reaching $17 billion in 2032, according to Counterpoint Research. However, the invasive (skin-piercing) nature of the sensors remains a bottleneck for wider adoption.

To onboard pre-diabetic and non-diabetic users into their respective ecosystems, wearable players such as Google, Huawei, Apple and Samsung are exploring non-invasive glucose monitoring, although none has a cleared product or a definitive timeline. In parallel, Google is differentiating its approach by promoting the Insulin Resistance Trends feature on its upcoming Pixel and Fitbit wearables, targeting metabolic health insights without positioning the feature as a medical device.

With this, medical device players will look to shift one-time OTC hardware purchasers to subscription-based insights and value-added services under a Health-as-a-Service model. As medical device companies look to secure their position in clinical-grade monitoring while focusing on expanding accessibility and recurring use, wearable companies will look to establish reliability in regulated health applications. As for consumers, they will be looking for integrated and personalised health insights from a single device or platform.

As a CGM device generates readings every 1-5 minutes, continuously sending them to the cloud can make the wireless transmission the system’s largest power consumer, creating a critical battery trade-off for coin-cell patches targeting 10-15 days of wear. While applications such as weekly sleep summaries or Time-in-Range glucose trends can tolerate latency, events such as hypoglycaemia or correlating glucose with insulin administration require near-real-time processing. Local inference also ensures trend detection and alerts remain functional without reliable connectivity, whether on a plane or in a gym basement when the phone is out of connectivity range. Keeping glucose data on-device rather than in the cloud can further reduce privacy, data-residency and regulatory burdens in markets tightening rules around health data residency. As CGM becomes integrated with other health-tracking data, competitive differentiation is likely to shift beyond sensor accuracy toward lower latency, greater reliability and reduced cloud dependence through Edge AI.

Medical CGM devices remain the clinical standard as OTC devices expand

Wearable players are increasingly exploring non-invasive glucose monitoring and integrating CGM capabilities in wearables, but the clinical-grade CGM devices from medical device players like Abbott and Dexcom are likely to remain the preferred option for the patient population in the near term. Their established regulatory stringency, validation and complementary treatment pathways with insulin management systems provide a strong value proposition that is difficult for the emerging wearable-based solutions to replicate. Meanwhile, the OTC CGM devices are likely to gain traction among health-conscious consumers, presenting a growing opportunity for wearable players to integrate CGM data to provide a holistic health picture. This adoption will depend on the accuracy and reliability of sensor data while maintaining practical considerations like battery life and usability. In addition, this user expansion creates a significant opportunity for the on-device AI chipset players given the recurring and disposable nature of CGM sensors. Consequently, the growth of OTC CGM users will expand the consumer base without necessarily displacing the established role of medical-grade CGM in clinical care.