9to5Mac noticed today that Apple has joined the Wireless Power Consortium, which controls the Qi standard, and promptly jumped to the conclusion that the next iPhone will feature wireless charging. We're not all that interested in iPhones around here -- at least, not to cover them -- but there may be both more and less here than meets the eye. The Apple Watch uses inductive … [Read more...]
About Dan Rosenbaum
First Reviews of Android Wear 2.0 Don’t Set the World on Fire
If you're in the smartwatch business and were hoping that Android Wear 2 was going to turn around your lagging fortunes, first reviews indicate that you ought to be dusting off your Plan B. The point of Android Wear, of course, is to provide a near turnkey operating system for hardware makers, freeing them up to do what they're supposedly best at. The downside is that the … [Read more...]
Watch Sales Are Great, Apple Says, Without Showing Proof
Apple reported record sales and earnings earlier this week, having sold 78 million iPhones in the last quarter alone and saying it has something like a quarter trillion d0llars in the bank. The company bragged that the Apple watch set unit and revenue records over the holiday season -- but continued to be shy about just what those records might be. Apple reports watch sales … [Read more...]
LG’s New Android Wear 2.0 Watches Are Rumored
We're starting to see detailed reports about the imminence of the next generation of Android Wear watches. Android Police and TechnoBuffalo are running sneak photos of two versions of the LG Watch Style. (Seriously, can some smart branding person please whack LG upside the head?) There are two versions being tipped: a standard Android Wear 2.0 watch at $249, and an LTE … [Read more...]
Fitbit’s 4Q Disappoints, Lays Off 6 Pct of Workers
If there was any doubt that 2016 was a bad year in the wristwear business, look no further than the 4th quarter results that Fitbit announced today. The company -- widely counted as the leader in the consumer wearables market -- had told stock analysts that it would sell about $725 million worth of trackers in the quarter; the actual number was about $580 million. Rather … [Read more...]
Misfit Moves to Full Display, Away from Intel/Google: CES
Misfit, one of the grand old brands in consumer wearables, had a couple of surprises at CES; one obvious, the other less so. The obvious one was the unveiling of its Vapor smartwatch, which abandons Misfit's signature design language. From the first, Misfits trackers have been small aluminum disks (or later, tubes) with only subtle LEDs as indicators and year-long battery … [Read more...]
Change Your Address Book: APX Labs Becomes Upskill
APX Labs was one of the first companies into the enterprise wearables market with its Skylight AR middleware. After more than six years in business, the company is changing its name. From here on out, call it Upskill. The idea, CEO Brian Ballard said in an email and blog post, is that industrial augmented reality enhances a worker's skill, helping them perform complex tasks … [Read more...]
Is a Fitbit Smartwatch Coming? Sure Looks Like It: CES
There was nothing explicit about Ftbit's plans at CES, but the dots were there to connect. Fitbit CEO James Park told The Verge at the conference that his company was building an app store, like the one for Pebble, the assets of which Fitbit bought a month earlier. The thing about Fitbit's product line is that there's no product for apps to run on, so Park's comment was … [Read more...]
How Accurate Are Walking Trackers? A Report from CES 2017
For the last few CES shows, we've been strapping on as many fitness trackers as would fit on our wrists, hitting the floors and conference rooms, and comparing results. We don't expect accuracy -- we don't do a manual count of steps -- but we hope for a degree of consistency. When we first did this three years ago, trackers showed error of more than 35 percent, which meant the … [Read more...]
Garmin Launches New Fenix 5 Line: CES
Alone among the Big 4 wearables companies, Garmin is launching new products at CES. It's introducing the Fenix 5 line, building on its rugged high-performance wristwear. There are three Fenix 5 models: the 5, the 5S, and the 5X. They've got a different look -- a bit smaller and less aggressively masculine. All the models come in a variety of colors and finishes and have … [Read more...]