Consumer demand for wearable technology is "rising fast," with Q3 global shipments totaling 12.7 million units, up 40 percent from the year-ago quarter, Futuresource Consulting said in a report. The outlook for full-year 2014 is for shipments to grow 32 percent to 52 million units across "all wearable categories this year," the firm said. "Q4 is where we're going to see all the action, with annual sales heavily weighted towards the pre-Christmas period." The firm expects 39 percent of the year’s commerce in wearables to be concentrated in Q4, "as wearable tech provides an appealing gifting option for consumers," it said. For 2015, "we're anticipating further acceleration in the pace of growth," as smart watches become more widely adopted, with a 44 percent growth rate driving the market to 74 million units shipped next year, it said. "The brand landscape continues to be dominated by fitness companies, due to the relative size of the fitness market within wearables," it said. "Fitbit has effectively consolidated its significant lead in activity trackers, despite the entrance of larger CE competitors. Samsung comfortably leads in the nascent smart watch market and Garmin retains a strong lead in the traditional fitness category." The Apple Watch will have "a significant impact upon the connected watch market with its entry in 2015," it said. "Longer-term growth is dependent upon how compelling a use case emerges for existing wearable products. While we have an optimistic view of the wearable market, there remain some uncertainties around the usage models for wearables, and whether a compelling raison d'étre for the category will develop."
Vexigo, which bills itself as a global leader in "content visualization," has released the Visualizr, a tool that enables publishers to instantly turn website content into a "personalized magazine" for mobile devices, including smart watches, the company said Tuesday. Each time the Visualizr is triggered, it scans every component on a website and builds a magazine based on a reader's areas of interest, it said. Vexigo's "contextual analysis engine" performs a real-time analysis of a reader’s navigation behavior to "populate" the magazine, it said. "Global mobile data traffic grew by more than 80 percent last year," it said. "Users want to quickly read the stories that matter most and the Visualizr delivers exactly that -- a personalized, mobile-optimized experience."
The Samsung Gear S smart watch will go on sale at Sprint and AT&T stores Nov. 7, the carriers said Thursday. Gear S owners will be able to make and receive phone calls, send and receive text messages and reply to emails, said Samsung. The Gear S, running on the Tizen platform, has a two-inch touch-screen display, an onscreen keyboard and S Voice, which lets users respond to incoming messages. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are built in, along with sensors including an accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, and sensors for heart rate, ambient light, UV and barometer, Samsung said. The water-resistant watch can play songs stored on the device or control music stored on a companion smartphone, according to literature. Memory is 512 MB and storage is 4 GB, Samsung said. Clock faces can be customized and wristbands are interchangeable, it said. The smart watch can be added to a Sprint Family Share Pack for a $10 per month line access charge, but Sprint is waiving the access charge through December 2015 for customers who add the watch as a new line of service to a Share Pack plan of 20 GB or higher, it said. Suggested retail price of the Gear S is $384 with a service plan or for no money down and 24 monthly payments of $16 under Sprint’s Easy Pay plan, it said. At AT&T, the Gear S will be available for $199.99 with a two-year agreement, and users can add the Gear S to a Mobile Share plan for $10 per month, the carrier said.
The MPAA and National Association of Theatre Owners updated their joint policy on preventing film theft in theaters to "fully integrate" wearables, the groups said in a statement Wednesday. The groups "have a long history of welcoming technological advances and recognize the strong consumer interest in smart phones and wearable ‘intelligent’ devices," their statement said. "As part of our continued efforts to ensure movies are not recorded in theaters, however, we maintain a zero-tolerance policy toward using any recording device while movies are being shown. As has been our long-standing policy, all phones must be silenced and other recording devices, including wearable devices, must be turned off and put away at show time." Those who don’t comply "may be asked to leave," they said. If theater managers suspect illegal recording activity is taking place, they will call the police "when appropriate," they said. MPAA representatives didn’t comment about the perceived threat of wearables in the campaign to prevent theatrical film theft, as smart watches generally lack the AV recording capabilities found on smartphones or tablets.
A Strasburg, Virginia, company called Genius SmartWatch needs to raise $100,000 through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to bring to market what it calls a "new generation" of smart watch containing an "advanced" micro-projection display technology, the company said in an announcement Tuesday. The display function on the wearable device it has developed, also called the Genius SmartWatch, increases the size of the image on the back of the hand using the newest LED technology "that works both day and night," the company said. It can also be personalized by changing the color of the projection image. The watch can be synched with a smartphone or tablet using a special Genius software app that enables the watch to display notifications, reminders, incoming calls, text messages, social media and a "wide variety of other customized projections," it said. "As part of the user-friendly functionality, you simply shake your wrist to dismiss a notification." The $100,000 raised in the crowdfunding campaign will be used for engineering, software development, testing, manufacturing and shipping, it said.
BeBop Sensors, a wearable sensor technology company, announced a smart fabric sensor that measures bend, location, motion, rotation, angle and torque. The fabric sensors provide continuous real-time data for force, x/y location, bend, twist, size, stretch and motion that’s applicable for markets including clothing and protective wear, shoes, healthcare devices, athletic equipment, automotive, robotics, gaming, biometrics and appliances, the company said Monday. The sensors were initially created for musical keyboards by Keith McMillen Instruments, which spun off BeBop Sensors as a separate business to target the wearables market. The technology could be employed in a variety of use cases including car steering wheels to sense driver awareness; to measure gait and flexure of toes and feet in socks or shoes; and in grip sensors to measure finger positions on a bat handle or golf club, the company said.
Casio is maintaining a “watch first” stance on smart watches as it eyes technology companies entering a category that it has been helping to pioneer since its first smartphone launch at CES 2011, Sue VanderSchans, senior director-marketing communications, told us during a holiday season product tour Wednesday. VanderSchans cited reviews of smart watches from tech companies so laden down with technology that simple functions – including telling time -- were difficult to perform. Casio is focusing on the watch first, and then technology, in its lineup, which starts at $99, she said. "We’re not trying to sell smartphones, and they are," VanderSchans said of companies including Apple, LG and Samsung. A smart watch’s success in the market will be determined by "maintaining the functionality of a watch," she said. Casio positions battery life of up to two years as a key differentiator of its smart watches, compared with an expected 24 hours for the upcoming Apple Watch. The Casio OmniSync STB1000 is compatible with apps including Abvio’s Runmeter, Walkmeter and Cyclemeter and Wahoo Fitness over Bluetooth 4.0, the company said. The OmniSync STB1000 displays running pace and distance, elapsed time, pulse cycling speed and pedal rotations, and can record up to 120 lap times without an iPhone, Casio said. With an iPhone connection via Bluetooth, users can control their music library using buttons on the watch to adjust volume and playback, Casio said.
More than 100 million smart watches will be in global use by 2019, and a "host" of premium brand launches over the next 12-18 months will bring the category "into mainstream consumer consciousness," Juniper Research said Tuesday (http://bit.ly/ZZ6i7D). Product differentiation in the category is now shifting from hardware toward features "that allow new capabilities," such as GPS and near field communication connectivity, it said. "These functionalities are likely to become standard in the next few years, particularly as Apple has offered payment and NFC capability via the Apple Watch." Those who await a "killer app" that will make smart watch demand explode are apt to be disappointed, the firm said. "Given the greater scope for development in smart watches, the industry should not expect a single capability to make or break the category." It forecasts that as big-name suppliers like Apple, LG and Sony roll out high-end products, "demand for notification-based watches like the Martian Notifier will diminish, even in markets where budget pricing is the biggest purchase driver." This means "smaller players will need to respond to increasing consumer expectations or lose further market share," it said Tuesday. The firm forecasts that "high functionality and premium branding means that the average smart watch price will remain above $200 until 2020 at the earliest."
Consumers in China, Germany, South Korea, the U.K. and the U.S. see the "potential" in using smart watches to carry plane tickets or as security keys for their computers and online accounts, a GfK survey found (http://bit.ly/1xPrPuq). The research firm canvassed 1,000 smartphone owners in each market to gauge their interest in being able to carry out specific functions with a smart watch, assuming they could save and send their data securely, it said. It found that among Americans and Chinese, there’s "openness" for using smart watches as identity cards and for payment systems, but Europeans "are much more hesitant about these functions," it said. The survey found that smart watches "have the potential for a wide range of uses," it said. "Gathering sports activities, navigation, phone calls and apps are the main applications that surveyed consumers are interested in at present." But "due to the nature" of a smart watch being worn on the wrist, "it could also serve as proof of identity, a travel ticket holder or a method of making payments at the checkout," the firm said. Nearly half of those surveyed in the five countries said they would be interested in using a smart watch to provide doctors or hospitals with personal healthcare data, it said. "However, people in different countries differ widely in how far they are ready to entrust sensitive health information" to a smart watch, it said. Nearly seven in every 10 Chinese canvassed said they would be interested in that application, vs. only half in the U.S. and 43 percent in South Korea, it said. "European consumers are more hesitant, with around one third of respondents in the U.K. expressing an interest and just one quarter in Germany. Men are rather more open to this idea than women and the difference between age groups is even more marked, with interest in using a smart watch for their health data increasing with age."