The wearable technology market is expected to reach USD 51.60 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 15.51% between 2016 and 2022. Among the major factors propelling the growth of the wearable technology market are consumer preferences for sophisticated gadgets, increasing growth prospects of next-generation displays in wearable devices, and growing popularity of Internet of Things (IoT) and connected devices. However, the shorter life cycle of the consumer electronics sector would hamper the overall growth of the wearable technology market."Infotainment and multimedia estimated to cover maximum share of the wearable technology market"
The major products in the infotainment include smart watches, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) headsets, multimedia players with computing facilities, and smart goggles among others. The use of AR and VR in the field of entertainment and video gaming would help the wearable technology market to grow. For instance, Sony Corporation (Japan) introduced the video PlayStation with the VR glasses. These factors would drive the growth of the wearable technology market for infotainment and multimedia."Smartwatch expected to grow at the highest rate in the product segment of the wearable technology market"
Wristbands and smartwatches are wearable computing devices, which are majorly used for tracking the wellness of the user. The smartwatch is a sophisticated and fashionable wearable device. This device could be connected to mobiles phones with several apps for displaying the data over the phone. Major companies such as Apple, Inc. (U.S.), Samsung Electronics (South Korea), and Fitbit, Inc. (U.S.) among others have developed such products, which satisfy the customer's need for fitness and healthcare. Hence, the consumers are more inclined to purchase such smartwatches....
Usage of wearables, like smart watches, will grow by nearly two-thirds this year, per an eMarketer forecast. Still, cost is holding many consumers back from purchasing a device, according to December 2015 research.
Kentico surveyed 1,000 internet users, ages 18 and older. More than two-thirds of internet users worldwide said that cost was one of the top reasons for not purchasing a smart watch.
Additionally, 38% of respondents said that another reason for not purchasing a smart watch was because there was not enough reasons to use it. This is likely because many smart watch capabilities, like sending and receiving emails or texts, as well as placing and receiving phone and video calls, can be done via a smartphone. In fact, 14% of internet users said they were dependent on their smartphone, and that was a reason for not purchasing a smart watch....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Still marketing challenges ahead for smart watches and wearables.
The ordinary concept of what a smartwatch is has been challenged by four guys in San Jose, who have been working a new device as part of a crowdfunding project that uniquely projects media onto the back of your hand.The Ritot appears to be very straightforward to use, with you being able to view the time by simply shaking your hand and a variety of notifications – including missed calls and new messages – by connecting the watch up to your smartphone....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
A team of inventors from San Jose have been working on a smartwatch that cleverly projects media onto the back of your hand.
ABI Research reports that smartphone components are being used in smartwatches in lieu of optimized smartwatch components, even when claimed otherwise.
Teardowns of a number of devices found that nobody has an optimal wearable peripheral solution yet. The Samsung Galaxy Gear and Z-watch use application processors originally targeted for smartphone/tablets and the uWatch goes a step further by using a full blown GPRS SOC, MediaTek MT6260, but only uses the integrated BT. Other watches like the Sony series and Pebble use discrete solutions.
The end result is less than optimal battery life and unnecessary cost/size that get passed on to the consumer....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
In the rush to launch products, manufacturers are hurting consumers and themselves by claiming they use "new" components instead of recycled smartphone components.
...Today also marks the first time we're seeing official US pricing for the Gear Fit (and that gorgeous curved OLED display): it'll cost $199 and also arrive in April. Samsung's Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo smartwatches have been priced at $299 and $199 respectively. AT&T will discount both of those by $50 if you purchase them alongside the S5, though the deal criminally doesn't seem to include the Fit....
Google excited many folks by announcing Android Wear smartwatches with a focus on Google Now, but there are still many valid reasons to consider the Pebble and new Samsung Gear options.
Google today announced that it plans to officially bring Android to smartwatches through its new project called Android Wear. It will enable developers to use features such as Google's Voice Search and health-tracking apps on wristwatches.
It's a free, open-source operating system, just like the smartphone and tablet version of Android.
According to a Google blog post, Android Wear will have many of the features found on existing smartwatches, including the ability to display updates from social media, message alerts, shopping notifications, and news....
As Samsung's Galaxy Gear commercial illustrates, the desire for a truly smart wrist-worn device is as old as the electronics industry itself. We've lusted after smart watches for so long that we've melded the two words into one utopian noun: a smartwatch. 2013 has been an undeniably good year for smartwatch enthusiasts. From the successful Kickstarter project that gave birth to the Pebble to Samsung and Sony's most sincere efforts to commercialize the category, the buyer's choice has never been wider. And that trend's only set to continue, with Nokia, Google, Apple, and Microsoft all actively eyeing the wearable device category.
Even as we keep advancing toward the end goal, however, much progress remains to be made. Prices are still too high for most consumers, functionality and battery life are too limited, and designs are a little bit too large and macho to be appealing to a truly wide audience. As Ian Drew, now executive VP at ARM and formerly a senior manager at Intel, told The Verge recently, smartwatches are still in the pre-iPod era of their development. That’s not to say that the tech industry is just waiting for Apple to show the way, but the definitive, trend-setting device that everyone tries to either beat or emulate simply hasn’t materialized yet. While we wait for someone, anyone, to deliver the ultimate smartwatch, what can the best devices available today tell us about perfecting the smart wrist-accessory?...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
The confusion and profusion of smartwatches gets a look from The Verge.
The best compliment I can give Sony’s SmartWatch 2 is that it works. I still believe that wearable devices are in their infancy, and the SmartWatch 2 is proof of this. While it’s filled with great ideas, a readable screen and actually looks like a fairly cool watch, the SmartWatch 2 is still more a novelty than an essential gadget buy.
Here’s the question you’ll be asking yourself: “Why do I need a smartwatch when everything I need is right on my smartphone?” And it’s a great question, a succinct one at that. Why does anyone need the SmartWatch 2 (SW2 as Sony calls it, and so will I for the remainder of the review)? Because it’s a decent second-screen for your notifications and I actually found myself keeping my phone in my pocket. When a notification came in, the SW2 buzzed, I quickly scanned my messages and carried on with my life. There’s not much else to the SW2 outside of it being an incredibly pricey notification hub, but it does carry with it a few nifty built-in apps, as well as ones that need to be downloaded after the fact....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Mostly positive review of the newly-updated Sony SmartWatch 2.
These are the 10 Smart watches to look out for in 2014 - it was taken from a list of watches that were demoed at the CES 2014 in Las vegas for smart phones (10 Smart Watches to look out for in 2014 http://t.co/28aCq0qxBV...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
So, riddle me this. How many smart watches does it take to catch the consumer's attention? And how many will survive?
While I was down at CES 2014 last week, I spent a lot of time looking at smart watches. In addition to showing the date and time, these watches also alert the wearer of incoming calls, text, emails or had other applications.
I have a Pebble watch and I was interested in what other similar watches are out there. I like my Pebble, but there is one really annoying thing about it: it doesn’t show that it needs to be charged. It just stops working – goes dead.
I looked at seven watches (actually, eight, but more about that later). There were a lot more than eight at CES, but with 3,000 vendors, I did what I could. I did not look at the Samsung, OR Sony watches as there are lots of reviews of them. The ones I looked at could be divided into three broad categories: colour screen watches ($350 and up), black and white screen watches ($130 and up) and one other with unique features....
The smart watch category is already getting crowded. Catherine Aczel Boivie notes 3 categories: color screen, black-and-white, and other unique features.
In the fast-paced world of consumer technology, every year brings new innovation, themes and trends. The industry is currently buzzing about wearable technology...
Fossil Group, whose portfolio of brands includes Adidas Originals, Burberry and Diesel, on Tuesday announced at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that it would launch more than 100 connected devices in 2016.
Fossil’s new wearables will include activity trackers and smartwatches for many brands including Misfit, the wearable technology brand that Fossil acquired in November 2015. Fossil Group will launch new products throughout 2016 and all 100 styles will be available by the year-end holidays. "We successfully launched wearables with one brand and 10 styles in 2015 and quickly ramped up to launch wearables for several brands in more than 100 styles in 2016," said Greg McKelvey, chief strategy and digital officer, Fossil Group. "Bringing Fossil Q to market helped us identify additional opportunity, and based on the positive consumer response, we are going big this year. Our retail partners will see the power of Fossil Group's scale and consumers will see the variety of functionality, style, colors and brands they desire."...
The Martian Voice Communicator tries hard make you think it’s not a smartwatch. The model I tested, a black faux diver with a non-working bezel and quartz movement, looks more like a drugstore Timex than a piece of precision electronics. However, hidden inside the normal-sized case is one of the better notification systems I’ve used.
The company has been making smartwatches since the dawn of the wearable revolution. Originally a solid competitor to Pebble, Martian has slowly moved into a position of power in the “I want a watch that looks like a watch” camp. By offering what are essentially slightly thicker quartz watches, they succeed consistently at this goal....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Is it time to take a look at a Martian Voice Communicator?
A new report claims that Apple's long-rumored iWatch device has already gone into production, and will be released later this year.
The long-rumored wearable computer from Apple, affectionately known as the iWatch, has reportedly gone into production.
Reports of the highly anticipated device's production run cropped up in the Tuesday edition of Taiwan-based China Times.
Citing sources in Apple's supply chain in Asia, the site claims that part of the production includes advanced SiP (system-in-a-package) modules, which can contain a processor, DRAM and flash memory....
Motorola design chief Jim Wicks and his team had spent a year and a half designing the device that would ultimately become the beautiful Moto 360 smartwatch, but every initial result was lacking. "Every time you do one," he tells me, "no matter how awesome you might think it is, if it’s square, everyone’s just kind of like ‘ehhh...’ And you sit there and you think about making it a little bit thinner, or a little bit bigger, a little bit heavier — you work for all those things and you still get that kind of feeling. And then finally we realized we’re not going to break through that ceiling, even with our peers, if we can’t get out of the ‘eh’ zone."
After two rounds of designs, prototypes, and tepid internal reactions, Motorola went back to the basics. Rather than reinvent wristwear or build a blocky rectangle like the Galaxy Gear or the Pebble Steel, Motorola decided to mimic what it hoped to replace: the elegant watches we’ve had on our wrists for decades. "We came to the realization that if we’re going to do this, we need to really embrace what this space is all about," he says. So Motorola turned the Moto 360 into a beautiful, circular stainless-steel wearable that looks more like a Timex than a Moto X. Wicks says it got the same reaction from all the industry experts he showed it to: "Yep, that’s a watch."...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Love the approach: "Motorola’s goal, he says, was to make hardware that gets out of the way."
The Times's Molly Wood explores why the makers of wearable devices are so focused on people's wrists and what the future may hold for fashionable tech. ...
...Samsung also introduced follow ups to the Galaxy Gear smartwatch: the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo. The Gear 2 is supposed to fix “pain points” from the original Galaxy Gear. It’s thinner than the first-gen model, with a 2-megapixel camera on its face rather than sitting cyclops-like on its strap. The smartwatch is made of brushed metal, and will be able to sync with 17 Galaxy-branded devices. It will also work with an expanded suite of apps, giving it greater functionality.
The Gear 2 Neo’s main difference is that it has a polycarbonate finish. Both models include a 1.63-inch Super AMOLED display and 4 GB of memory inside so they can act as an MP3 player, whether your phone is paired nearby over Bluetooth or not. You’ll be able to swap out the bands too, for maximum personalization.
The Gear Fit, as its name would suggest, is Samsung’s sporty wearable for the Jawbone Up and Nike FuelBand space. The watch has a 1.84-inch curved AMOLED display and can track your steps and heart rate, as well as deliver notifications for incoming calls, emails, and text messages.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Samsung keeps its wearable line rolling with the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo smartwatch
Though it is already the second wave of smartwatches this product type is still at an early market stage. Especially when looking at their role in the wearables consumer market in 2013 and compared to the current success of activity trackers. However, there are many smartwatches available right now which in some cases even can replace activity trackers or offer other additional features for gadget enthusiasts. The products available show there are many approaches to produce smarter watches by enhancing them with software features. Find out what the market has to offer and whether the right fit for you already exists in our smartwatch overview...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Useful reviews if you're in the market for a Smart Watch.
This is the CES of the wearable gadget. And, while there are all sorts of technologies you can wear—after all, earbuds are wearable—the big explosion is in fitness trackers.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Tracking wearable technology innovations that have the potential to grow into real products that the market will actually buy. one thing's for sure. There will be plenty of company and product failures on the road to success.
Pebble is back at CES, and this time it has a brand new, redesigned metal smartwatch and tons of new apps.Pebble debuted at CES 2013 and started shipping to its Kickstarter backers soon after. In the last year, the smartwatch has sold more than 300,000 units and is available at Amazon, Best Buy and AT&T.For CES 2014, Pebble is showing off its new Pebble 2.0 software, the Pebble app store and Pebble Steel, its premium smartwatch....
Soon wearable technology will be as common as the iPhone. An expert in ergonomics shows the best way to design for the small screen.
Five years ago, I coined the phrase “Ergonomics of Interaction Design,” to explain how physical ergonomic principles could be applied to the design of user interfaces. At the time, many thought of ergonomics only as it related to 3-dimensional, tangible products where issues of physical fit and comfort were considered critical (think: office chair). But the rapid proliferation of gestural and touch interfaces combined with the widespread use of devices in unconventional contexts--in bed, while driving, while walking--signaled growing design challenges.
Since then, display clarity and touch-screen sensitivity have advanced. Designer awareness and attention to physical interactions have inched upward. But there is still much more to do....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Here's a look at the ergonomics of smart watch design.
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Consumer growth highlighted.