Apple is banking on the fact that you will want to wear your tech on your sleeve

When Apple looks at your wrist, it sees a multi-billion dollar opportunity.

This week, the company unveiled its version of the smartwatch — a product that analysts say is a burgeoning arena for the tech industry, which could gross $10 billion in four years. And though Apple is getting most of the attention right now, the wearable revolution is just beginning.

“In some ways, the Apple Watch is a latecomer to the wearables game,” says Ben Johnson, the host of Marketplace Tech. “There have been lots of things on the market for a while — the FitBit, the Nike FuelBand, Jawbone. These are all wearable devices that track our fitness and pull a lot of other data from our daily behavior.”

According to Johnson, Apple is finally wading into this area of the tech market because wearables present a huge economic opportunity.

“By some estimates, 40 percent of US consumers are interested in buying a smartwatch,” he says. “That sounds kind of high to me, but it’s part of a larger and growing market that Apple is definitely banking on, and other companies are, too.”

Samsung also released a smartwatch this year, along with LG and Motorola.

“The big question is will consumers actually buy in?” asks Johnson, who wonders if the smartwatch is just a passing trend.

“One of the things that a lot of companies haven’t really been able to unlock yet is creating a watch that people really want to use,” says Johnson. “And these days, at least in the mobile space, phones are getting bigger — you saw Apple release a larger phone yesterday … The idea of making things smaller and having a tiny little watch face that you would interact with is a big question mark.”

Still, Johnson admits that the Apple Watch is optimized for small functionality.

“In its own Apple way, it looks very sleek," he says. "There’s three different versions of the watch, and each has two different sizes. But yesterday, I did not see a product that was revolutionary.”

While Johnson admires the Apple Watch, he doesn't expect it to completely change personal computing in the way that the iPad did four years ago.

“That was a revolutionary product, as had been the iPod, the iPhone, the Mac, and so many things before it,” he says. “I didn’t see that yesterday. I felt like it was a product that, yes, I will want to buy, but I don’t have to have.”

The fashion industry , though, could swing the pendulum in favor of the smartwatch, according to Johnson. “I think that there’s a possibility there," he says.

“Apple’s that company that has, at least in the past, designed products that are a fashion statement, the iPhone being the best example. Think about the fact that Apple is expecting to sell between 60 and 70 million iPhone 6s … If it expects to sell as many watches, then, yes, we are looking at the possibility of the fashion industry buying into this and consumers buying into this.”

But Johnson also thinks that the most popular wearable tech may not even be visible. He offers this example: “Things in your clothing that can monitor your heart rate or monitor your health and deliver you data wirelessly.” Still, that info could be sent to your smartwatch.

This story is based on an interview from PRI's The Takeaway with John Hockenberry, where the American conversation takes flight every weekday.