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...]
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...]
Snapchat May Be Deciding That Glass Is Half-Full
Let’s be up front about this: everything in this item is based entirely on rumor, although it's sourced on someone cruising industry want ads and noticing an anomaly. What popped for the perspicacious browser was that Snapchat, the wildly popular photo sharing app, is looking for hardware experts to develop Snapglass. This after the company's 2014 purchase of Vergence Labs, … [Read more...]
Toyota Wearable Will Bring a World of Detail to the Blind
Toyota’s first wearable has nothing to do with cars but a lot to do with mobility. Project Blaid is designed to help people who are blind or visually impaired to make their way through the world more easily. The device is a light, U-shaped yoke that fits around the user’s neck and over the shoulders. It can recognize common shapes and signs, and fills in information by voice … [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...]
Garmin Updates Vivofit and Vivoactive Fitness Trackers
Garmin is a major player in the fitness wearables marketplace, mostly at the higher end. Last week at Mobile World Congress, the company showed upgrades to Vivofit and Vivoactive, two of its less pricey smartwatch fitness products. The Vivoactive HR has all the features of the original Vivoactive, including tracking runs, steps, and sleep, and has sports apps. The new HR … [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...]
Runkeeper Bought by Shoemaker ASICS
Adidas has Runtastic, Under Armour has MyFitnessPal and Endomondo. The consolidation in the wearables market continues with the Japanese shoe giant ASICS acquiring Runkeeper. The smartphone app was sold late last week; pricing was not disclosed. Runkeeper, with 40 million users, was the last big independent running app, and ASICS was the last big running shoe maker … [Read more...]
In the Same Vein: New Recognition Technology from Samsung
Fingerprint and iris scanners might soon be old hat in the recognition game. Samsung’s recently published patent “Wearable Device and of Operating the Same” is for a wearable device that can identify a user by an image of her veins. The device takes a picture of your veins via a camera/infrared combination and compares it to a stored image. If they match, the device could be … [Read more...]