Pebble, the pioneering smartwatch maker, has laid off 40 people -- a quarter of its staff -- as CEO Eric Migocovsky blames a tough funding environment. Migicovsky told Tech Insider that his company would focus on the health and fitness features of his company's watches, as those are the features most in demand. Pebble's watches have had fitness-tracking features only … [Read more...]
About Dan Rosenbaum
Intel vs Qualcomm Smartwatch Platform Battle Emerges
Intel and Google have been building a platform that enables smartwatch makers to build products with far less effort than they would need were they doing it from scratch. (The Fossil Group's smartwatch efforts owe a lot to the Intel/Google platform.) But Intel rival Qualcomm is now getting into the platform game, too. At this week's Baselworld watch show, Qualcomm, a leader … [Read more...]
Do Wearables Belong in Your Ear?
For the last few years, since wearables became small enough to be convenient, the wrist has been the most frequent commercial battleground. There are, of course, hundreds of fitness bands and trackers that sit on your wrist because, well, people are used to wearing things on their wrists. But is that really the best place? Maybe not. The site FashNerd makes a strong case … [Read more...]
Orion Labs Updates Onyx Point-to-Point Voice Wearable
We first met the folks from Orion Labs last year, when they debuted a puck-like push-to-talk device. The walkie-talkie style interface was interesting, but the plastic industrial design was pretty utilitarian. A more fashion-oriented version called Ruby didn't seem to get much traction, as it put a technology company too far into the accessories business -- a tough place to … [Read more...]
IDC Says Apple Shipped 11.6M Watches Last Year, About Half of Analysts’ Guesses
iCharts Research firm IDC reported last week that Apple sold about 11.6 million watches in 2015, a figure that's about half of what stock analysts had been expecting. For the full year, the company was in third place in the consumer wearables market, following Fitbit and Xiaomi. As a whole, IDC said, the wearables market jumped 127 percent in the 4Q15, and 172 percent … [Read more...]
Epson Unveils Moverio BT-300 AR Visor at Mobile World Congress
Epson, which makes the most successful binocular augmented reality visor, today announced its newest model, the Moverio BT-300. The company says it is the lightest AR glasses on the market. Designed as a lighter follow-on to the BT-200, the BT-300 and meant for the commercial market, as opposed to the heavier duty industrial market. Asked which markets had expressed the most … [Read more...]
APX Labs’s Skylight AR Software Now Runs on Recon Jet Displays
APX Labs and Recon Instruments are announcing that Skylight, APX's popular software platform for enterprise applications, is now available for Recon Jet's smart eyewear. The announcement continues APX's strategy of running on as many hardware platforms as possible; Recon -- now part of Intel -- has been focused on sports-related applications: cycling, boating, skiing. But … [Read more...]
Smart Watch Sales Outpace Swiss Watch Sales
The market research company Strategy Analytics is reporting that, for the first time, more smart watches were sold in the last quarter of 2015 than Swiss watches, by a margin of 8.1 million to 7.9 million. The company said that the smart watch market grew 316 percent from the year previous, while sales of Swiss watches declined 5 percent. Analysts estimated that 8 out of 10 … [Read more...]
GSMA Introduces eSIM for Wearables, Other Devices
The GSMA is the international organization that's in charge of the global wireless standard GSM and its offshoots like LTE; if your phone (or tablet) uses a SIM card, it's running GSM. It's also the group that runs next week's Mobile World Congress. There are two problems with SIM cards: they're huge for electronic components, and they're tied to specific carriers. In … [Read more...]
WSJ Not Impressed By Fitbit Blaze
The Wall Street Journal is out with the first review we've seen of the Fitbit Blaze, and it's pretty meh. Reviewer Joanna Stern said the Blaze, a full-face fitness watch announced last month at CES, is kind of big, kind of ugly, and kind of expensive for what it delivers. Its fitness functions are still better than anyone else's, she said, but not enough better to move her … [Read more...]