The research shop OnWorld has a new study out, predicting that wearables will be a $50 billion within five years. The company counts more than 400 "unique products" on the market (although we've seen a lot of those products, and we're pretty sure that they're more "commodity" than "unique"). The report says that hardware will be the largest segment of the market, although … [Read more...]
Android Wear Opens the Door for the Luxury Watch Market
Like you all, we've been digesting the wearables news that came out of Google I/O last week, and puzzling a bit over its paucity. There was very little about Glass, which may or may not indicate that it's no longer a development project but may be about to be a project. (Remember, I/O is a developers' conference.) And we were kind of surprised about the muted reception for … [Read more...]
Pebble Watches Will Now Run Misfit Software
Once Google announced Android Wear, we started to worry whether excellent products from Misfit and Pebble might be toast. Now comes word that they're building an ecosystem of their own, with Pebble devices tracking steps using Misfit software. The Misfit trackers are lovely, but have a scant user interface. Pebble watches aren't bad, but are primarily notification devices … [Read more...]
A Taxonomy for the Internet of Things
The wearables market is a subset of the Internet of Things, and we here do try to stay away from talking about IoT because it's such a huge topic. But the Energy Harvesting Journal has made an interesting attempt to illustrate the IoT ecosystem -- and, as a result, find a place in it for wearables. The publication separates the IoT world generally into three groups: a … [Read more...]
Want to Sell Fitness Apps? Target Moms
The mobile analytics company Flurry announced recently that the growth of fitness app usage is roughly double the usage growth of the rest of the appiverse. In the first six months of this year, Flurry saw a 62 percent increase in fitness app usage; the rest of the world saw a 33 percent increase. (There are, in case you're keeping track, more than 6,800 iOS fitness apps in … [Read more...]
“Details” Emerging About Apple iWatch
Reuters and the Wall Street Journal are both reporting this morning that Apple's much-expected iWatch health monitor is about to enter production in anticipation of an announcement "as early as October." This certainly would fit with Apple's normal product cycle and would be in time for holiday shopping. Both outlets say that the device will be built by Quanta, in Taiwan. … [Read more...]
Marketers say iOS Users Prefer Health, but Android Users Like Fitness
Let's say you're an app developer, and you're trying to decide whether to position your product as a health app or a fitness app. A marketing study indicates that it depends whether you're building for iOS or Android. From Marketing Daily: After evaluating 500 million monthly ad impressions on more than 400 of its mobile ad platforms and apps, Opera Mediaworks says iPhone … [Read more...]
Token Wristband Concept Puts Your Money on Your Wrist
The Seattle design studio Artefact Group has a neat design concept for a way to meld wearable tech with financial management. The Token wristband -- which is strictly conceptual and not something you'll be able to buy anytime soon -- presents hardware and interface ideas that simplify the processing of spending and tracking money. Think of it as Coin rethought. And since … [Read more...]
Google Picks Its First Five Glass Software Partners
There's more signs of Glass's life in the enterprise: Google has selected five software companies as its first Google At Work Certified Partners. We met the guys at APX Labs at Glazed earlier this month, although they were demoing their enterprise data application on Epson's Moverio. Aside from its hooks into enterprise data of all kinds, what's interesting about APX is an … [Read more...]
RockHealth Issues a Brilliant Digital Health Ecosystem Report
The digital health incubator RockHealth has put out a terrific hard-eyed report on the state of biosensing wearables. The core findings: The consumer market is immense but unengaged because vendors haven't defined adequate use cases. Syndicated market research reports about the size of the wearables markets are essentially all guessing. The biggest opportunities lie in … [Read more...]