Apple took a lot of the veils off the Apple Watch today at a typically elaborate event in San Francisco. Most of the Watch demos had been originally shown in September, but the demos were deeper and more apparently ready for shipment. The most important details: Pre-orders on April 10, with previews in stores. Shipment April 24. Battery life touted at 18 hours of typical … [Read more...]
MWC Day 0: Wireless Charging in Samsung Galaxy S6 May Have an Impact on Wearables
Just a couple of hours after the announcement, there are already a zillion places where you can read about Samsung's new Galaxy S6 phone. We can affirm that it's a nice piece of gear. But what's important for wearables is not the phone itself but one of its features: wireless charging. The S6 supports wireless charging with the two major standards: WPC (the Qi specification) … [Read more...]
MWC: IKEA Embraces Wireless Charging
We don't know if you'll have to put it together yourself, but IKEA -- the Swedish furniture giant -- will be building Qi-standard wireless charging spots into bedside tables, lamps, and desks starting in April. The company will make the Wireless Charging collection, part of its Home Smart initiative, will be first be available in Europe and North America, and will roll out … [Read more...]
Vuzix and Pristine Partner for Enterprise Wearables
Pristine builds telepresence enterprise and healthcare applications around wearable technology. Like many companies, it built its first round of products around Google Glass -- understandable as Google was the best-publicized visual wearable, but an unfortunate choice as Glass has retrenched. There are other (and better) visor solutions, though. With Glass off the market for … [Read more...]
UnderArmour Buys MyFitnessPal and Endomondo, Adding to Digital Health Portfolio
UnderArmour, the Baltimore-based company best known for athletic wear, is sweeping up the athletic community. It announced today that it's bought MyFitnessPal and Endomondo, adding about 100 million registered users to its existing base of MapMyFitness and UA Record users. The company says it now has 120 million registered users of fitness apps. Endomondo, which has most of … [Read more...]
Pebble Teases a Pivot
Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky gave an exclusive interview to The Verge, in which he said that his company has sold 1,000,000 watches, and that 2015 will bring new products and a new software platform. Pebble's in a pretty difficult spot. It more or less pioneered the notification device use case for wearables, and but saw Google wield its sharp elbows in the market with Android … [Read more...]
Whistle Dog Fitness Tracker Buys Canine GPS Company Tagg
When we wrote about the Whistle canine fitness tracker a year ago, we said "what this thing really needs is geofencing and geolocation." We met the folks from Tagg at CES earlier this month, saw their dog GPS collar with its geofencing and geolocation, and thought it might be a nice accompaniment for Whistle. Now comes word that we weren't the only ones who thought so: Whistle … [Read more...]
Sketchy Reports of a Foldable Battery from Korean Company Jenax
There's a company in Busan, South Korea, called Jenax; its main business seems to be stainless steel thread used to make firefighters' turn-out gear. At a wearables conference in Japan last week, Jenax showed what media reports say is a foldable Li-Ion battery that can bend 1 million times in its lifecycle. Not all the details as they are being reported add up. Some reports … [Read more...]
Vuzix To Trade on NASDAQ Capital Markets
With its new $30 million funding from Intel, visor maker Vuzix is upgrading its stock. Previously available on the over-the-counter bulletin board system, the company says that starting Wednesday Jan 28, VUZI will be traded on the larger NASDAQ Capital Markets exchange. A press release from the company says the infusion of Intel money allowed the company's balance sheet to … [Read more...]
Fortune Magazine Takes a Tough Look at Jawbone
Fortune Magazine has a well-reported and cold-eyed look at Jawbone, maker of (among other things) the upcoming UP3 fitness band. It describes the company as a 16-year-old startup that skates from one rapidly commoditized success to another -- Bluetooth headsets, wireless speakers, and now fitness bands. The picture it paints is of an innovative company that hasn't quite figured … [Read more...]