Remember that Jawbone and Fitbit were suing each other over patents and trade secrets and unfair hiring practices? Jawbone started the fight, but Fitbit's coming out better. A judge at the International Trade Commission yesterday tossed out Jawbone's patents, ruling that the company's patent on the very idea of gathering heath and sleep data is invalid. The ruling weakens … [Read more...]
Smart Clothing and Body Sensor Market to Hit 190 Million Units Through 2021, Says Tractica
The market research company Tractica says consumers will buy as many as 190 million pieces of what it categorizes as smart clothing and body sensors in the next five years. But they don't really say how that might happen. If you want detailed numbers, you'll have to pony up $3800 for the full report. (We're generally pretty skeptical of five-year market projections, which is … [Read more...]
Faster Next Gen Apple Watch to Have Cellular SIM, Says WSJ
We're coming up on the first anniversary of the Apple Watch's announcement -- as opposed to its shipment -- so expect a lot of stories about its shortcomings, benefits, and future. The Wall Street Journal has one such, which cites "sources" as saying the next version of the watch will have a faster processor and be able to connect directly to cellular networks. Both guesses … [Read more...]
NBA Whips Out a Can of Whoop on Whoop
Fitness and biometric wearables are a perfect fit for professional sports, even though the sports’ governing bodies do not always agree. International soccer talks about it, the NFL and MLB seem to be going for it in some form, and now it’s becoming an issue for the NBA. And the NBA says “no.” Why? Because, and here’s the sticking point, none of the professional leagues … [Read more...]
Wearable Tech Comes to Major League Baseball, But It’s a Secret
We confess to being lifelong Mets fans here (with an apostate Phillies backer on staff, but we don't talk to him), so we were happy to see that Major League Baseball is starting to embrace in-game wearable tech. The Associated Press has learned that MLB has approved the use during games of the Motus Baseball Sleeve and the Zephyr Bioharness. The former measures stress on a … [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...]
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...]
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...]