Organizers of the Wearable Tech Expo July 13-15 at New York’s Javits Convention Center abruptly pulled the event from Javits and “relocated” it to Las Vegas where it will now be held “in conjunction” with the IoT Evolution Expo Aug. 17-20 at Caesars Palace, they said in Wednesday emails to preregistered Wearable Tech Expo attendees and in a notice posted at the show’s website. Organizers made the move “in order to give you the ‘whole picture’ view of wearables,” they said. “This coupling of events gives you access to even more companies, more education, and more networking opportunities.” Representatives of the organizer of both events, Technology Marketing Corp. of Norwalk, Connecticut, didn’t respond to queries about the business reasons for pulling the Wearable Tech Expo from Javits less than three weeks before it was to be held. As recently as June 18, organizers were inundating journalists with emails promoting the Wearable Tech Expo’s extensive conference and keynote lineups. Also not responding to queries were representatives of Javits, which was still listing an event called Fast Wearable Technology for July 13-15 on its website's calendar Wednesday. Clicking on the “Link to Event Website” brought one to the page announcing the Wearable Tech Expo’s move to Las Vegas.
CEA partly credits “enthusiasm around shipments in the smart watch category” for the “slight uptick” in its index of consumer technology expectations for June, it said in a Tuesday announcement. The index, which measures consumer expectations about technology spending, increased by 1.2 points from May to reach 87.8, it said. CEA’s separate index of consumer expectations, which measures consumer sentiment about the U.S. economy as a whole, increased two points from May to reach 175.7, it said. It’s further evidence that the economy “continues to edge forward after a slow start to the year,” CEA said. CEA expects the economy “will continue to pick up in the back half of the year given continuing encouraging employment news and increases in sales of existing homes,” it said.
Cumulative shipments of wearables are expected to top 750 million units by 2020, with smart watches 45 percent of all delivered products, said research released Monday by Tractica. It said that by 2020, fitness trackers will be 30 percent of total device shipments and wearable cameras will be 15 percent.
About 30 percent of broadband households in the U.S. own a connected health device and 12 percent own more than one, said research released Thursday by Parks Associates. It said that more than half of all broadband households nationally use an online health tool to talk with a doctor, fill a prescription or access personal health information.
Fitbit shares opened at $30.40 on their first day of trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange, one morning after the supplier of fitness-tracker wearables priced its 36.6-million-share initial public offering at $20 a share. Shares reached a high of $31.90 Thursday before closing the day 48.4 percent higher at $29.68. Fitbit “pioneered the connected health and fitness market” and through March 31 had sold more than 20.8 million devices since its 2007 inception, the company said last month in its IPO registration statement (see 1505080035). The stock is trading under the ticker symbol FIT.
“Astounding” demand for basic wearables has propelled the overall wearables category, which is expected to grow 173 percent this year to 72.1 million shipments, said an IDC quarterly tracker. Vendors including Fitbit and Xiaomi have lifted the market with sub-$100 basic wristbands that will show continued momentum through 2015, said IDC. In 2016, smart wearables capable of running third-party apps are expected to take the lead in the category, which IDC predicts will run at a compound annual growth rate of 43 percent through 2019. Smart wearable shipments are forecast to reach 33.1 million units in 2015, up from 4.2 million units last year, said IDC. Smart wearables including Apple Watch and Microsoft's HoloLens represent an "upcoming change in computing, and the transition from basic to smart wearables opens up a slew of opportunities for vendors, app developers, and accessory makers,” said analyst Jitesh Ubrani. A platform battle is looming among Android Wear, Tizen and watchOS, as each improves user interfaces, experiences and applications, said Ramon Llamas, IDC research manager. The competition will “raise the expectations of what a smart wearable can do,” he said.
As part of its IoT efforts, which produced 22 million IoT connected devices worldwide by March 31 (see 1506150046), AT&T Wireless added six wearables to its roster Wednesday for sale June 26. The Case-Mate Rebecca Minkoff Notification Bracelet ($120) will debut through AT&T online and through select AT&T retail stores. The bracelet vibrates when a call or text is received and can be programmed to receive notifications for up to 25 people. Battery life is 30 days, the carrier said. The Healbe GoBe ($299), which will launch at AT&T’s Michigan Avenue, Chicago, store and at att.com, tracks calorie intake and calorie burn without manual logging of meals or activities, AT&T said. Three sensors using Flow Technology give data on net calorie count for a defined time period, it said. The device also tracks metrics for hydration, stress, sleep quality, heart rate and blood pressure. Mio Fuse ($149) will launch at AT&T online and in select stores offering “EKG-accurate” heart-rate monitoring along with activity tracking for steps, calories, distance and pace, AT&T said. Users can monitor activity on fitness apps, GPS watches and bike computers via Bluetooth Smart, it said. The smart wristband can track up to 30 hours of exercise data and two weeks of activity data, AT&T said. Misfit’s Flash ($49), available in all AT&T stores and online, provides feedback on activity progress, controls music and tells time with one touch, AT&T said. LEDs on the display indicate the distance to the nearest daily activity goal, and the replaceable battery runs for six months, it said. The Withings Activité Pop ($149), available in company-owned AT&T stores and online, is an activity tracker with a standard watch face. The step-up Withings Activité ($450), launching online and in AT&T’s Michigan Avenue store, automatically adjusts to time zones and packs 3D motion sensors to track steps, sleep and distance traveled, the carrier said. Both watches are waterproof and come with an eight-month battery. Meanwhile, AT&T will begin trial integration of the Nest Learning Thermostat with its Digital Life platform next month, and it will begin selling the Microsoft Lumia 640XL smartphone as an exclusive on June 26, it said.
A smart watch’s display is its “big battery-sucking component,” consuming up to a third of battery life when fully charged, Sidney Chang, who heads Android Wear business development at Google, told us at last week’s Display Week conference in San Jose (see 1506040024). That’s why Google is in constant “conversations” with “all the best SoCs in the world” about “battery optimization” in a smart watch, Chang said of systems-on-a-chip suppliers. “But the most bang for the buck is going to come from the display.” In the smart watch “use case” of health and wellness, “we certainly need battery life there” to support functionality such as recording “heart rate on a constant basis,” he said. Though Chang is personally fascinated by the research into solar and other "energy harvesting" techniques and their possible implications for smart watch power management, he’s concerned they “don’t quite generate the power that’s needed on a wattage basis these days,” he said. “But I’m optimistic” because battery life in smart watches “is something that the entire consumer electronics industry would love to solve,” he said. “Watches are something that lives in the real world, so having something that gets a lot of sun exposure is something that the watch has something of a natural attribute towards.”
The FCC Wireless Bureau approved a waiver sought by Breitling U.S.A. for its dual band emergency watch, branded as the Emergency2 watch. Last year, the bureau sought comment on the proposed waiver (see 1411040040). The device, intended for use on land, can be used to transmit a distress signal on 406.0-406.1 MHz for communication with the Cospas-Sarsat satellite system and a lower-powered homing signal on 121.5 MHz, the bureau said. Breitling needed a waiver because the locator watch doesn't meet all of the requirements for Radio Technical Commission for Maritime Services (RTCM) devices. No commenter opposed the waiver and most supported the request “unreservedly,” the bureau said. Breitling told the FCC that incorporation of a personal locator beam (PLB) into a wristwatch casing, instead of the more traditional handheld device “renders certain requirements in the RTCM standard irrelevant or infeasible, but argues that the Emergency2 provides the offsetting advantage that it is always immediately at hand and ready to operate, with no added risk of harmful interference to others,” the bureau said. Breitling sought a waiver of various manual control, battery and labeling requirements in the RTCM standard. “There appears to be no dispute that most of the requirements in the RTCM standard from which Breitling requests a waiver are irrelevant or infeasible for a PLB incorporated into a wristwatch casing,” the bureau said. “For example, the requirements for integral manual on/off controls, a separate test switch, a highly visible orange or yellow case, and certain labels contemplate a handheld, box-shaped device.”
Global smart watch display unit shipments are expected to grow 250 percent year over year, reaching a record 34 million units in 2015, led by demand for the new Apple Watch, IHS said in a Monday report. “The display market is still assessing the staying power of smart watch demand, so as not to overshoot display supply needs in the coming year,” IHS said. Active-matrix OLED panels will be 58 percent of all smart watch panels shipped this year, since the market-leading Apple Watch uses AMOLED technology, the research firm said. The Apple Watch will have 84 percent of AMOLED smart watch panels and 49 percent of total displays for smart watches shipped in 2015, it said. “Apple Watch has attracted a lot of attention from consumers, which has led to increased demand,” IHS said. “The display market is carefully watching consumer response to products in the smart watch category, which should help to improve future display technologies.”