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While the rise of fashionable lifestyle wearable devices – tracking your movement, monitoring your heartbeat and even reporting on your patterns of sleep – has captured plenty of headlines and media attention, the business applications for wearables have largely escaped the hype.

Instead, in the business world, the focus has been on the predicted growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the need for more machine to machine (M2M) communications. Well, guess what,...

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Research from HP Fortify on Internet of Things (IoT) security has revealed 100% of smartwatches tested contain “significant” vulnerabilities, including authentication, encryption and privacy concerns.

In particular, every smartwatch tested lacked two factor authentication with its mobile interfaces, alongside the ability to lock accounts after up to five failed password attempts. 30% were vulnerable to account harvesting, while 40% of cloud connections tested were...

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Apple, not surprisingly, has attracted plenty of headlines in recent weeks, whether it’s the rollout of Apple Pay, or the diminishing success of the Apple Watch. Indeed, recent figures revealed sales down 90% since the first week’s launch, while analysts at BMO Capital Markets noted they were “disappointed” with sales of the smartwatch and lowered its...

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The launch of the Apple Pay service in the UK earlier this week, where users can pay for services by simply tapping their smartphone or smartwatch, caused the technology media to go into meltdown – a bit like any other Apple-related event.

Reaction was generally optimistic, although there were a few bugbears. After compatibility with Transport for London (TfL) was announced, the local government body warned commuters could be liable for penalty fines for three reasons: if a...

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Let’s face it: we’ve all moaned about our smartphone’s lack of battery. Anyone who has ever gone away on a trip and forgotten their charger knows never to do it again.

For wearables, the equation has turned on its head, and it’s a problem which many companies are trying to solve. Microsoft, in a recent post on its TechNet blog, revealed it was going about it in an innovative way: by...

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According to California-based Slice Intelligence, sales of the Apple Watch have plunged 90% since the opening week. Apple, who is also based in California, has been selling fewer than 20,000 watches a day in the U.S. since the initial surge in April, and on some days fewer than 10,000. 

This is a sharp contrast to the approximately 200,000 watches...

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Prescription-only wearables have the potential to be not merely life-changing, but life-critical to those who need them. Such devices are already known to be especially effective at monitoring chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes or epilepsy in ‘real time’, sending notifications and alerts every time the wearer enters a ‘danger zone’.

While many of these medical grade wearables start as single purpose devices (such as, for instance, the

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Wearables to assess, advise and improve health and wellbeing has long been one of the key use cases of the technology. Now, here’s a new idea which has come out of Google: a health-tracking wristband which is prescribed to patients or used for clinical trials.

As reported by Bloomberg the device, which is...

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When it comes to wearables, it has always been clear that Samsung intends to be a pioneer. However, the Korean-giant received a lukewarm reception for its 'Gear' range of smartwatches and left the door open for Apple to dominate the market in two months since the launch of their...

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When ApplePay arrived on the scene – expected to hit the UK in July – offering users the comfort of using their iPhone 6 and Apple Watch to pay in shops and apps, it appeared a straightforward partnership opportunity for banks.

Barclays, however, is going down a different route, and is launching three “wearable” devices that can be used to make payments at 300,000 locations across the UK; a wristband, a fob, and a sticker. The bPay wristband was originally...

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Marketers and retailers beware: advertising and m-commerce on wearable devices is on its way, and consumers are looking to embrace this next step.

According to survey data from e-commerce provider Avangate released earlier this week, 64% of the 1000 consumers questioned said they were willing to make a purchase on a wearable device. Take into account the figures...

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The NHS is unveiling plans to increase Wi-Fi adoption and tentatively examine the usage of wearable devices to monitor patients in hospital.

The proposals, announced following the Personalised Health and Care 2020 blueprint document published last November, mark “a key moment in the journey to making technology work for patients”, according to Britain’s healthcare service.

According to the NHS, the need for more expansive Wi-Fi is an important consideration....

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At present there is a huge amount of apprehension surrounding wearable technology in the UK as many people are hesitant to invest in them because of privacy fears.

To try to shed some light on this scepticism, several studies have been conducted into privacy and wearable technology. A major study by cloud computing company Rackspace found that 51 per cent of...

Fitbit retains the number one position in the global wearable device market, but is under stiff competition from Chinese-based firm Xiaomi, according to the latest numbers from IDC.

The figures represent a stark closing in on Fitbit’s market dominance. The San Francisco-based company punts out 34.2% of the 11.4 million wearables shipped in the first quarter of 2015, compared with Xiaomi’s 2.8 million (24.6%).

Xiaomi’s first wearable device was announced in July 2014, which naturally...

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One of the most-popular NFL franchises, the Dallas Cowboys, have dedicated a room at their training facility to virtual reality which will allow their quarterbacks, linebackers, and safeties to assess and hone their skills in brand-new ways thanks to technology from Stanford-based StriVR Labs.

When you're just watching film; you don't get the sound, you don't...

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As relatively new additions to our arsenal of tech gadgets, the current state of debate around wearable tech has to date focused almost exclusively around the nuts and bolts: the coolness of the device and features, the accuracy of the data points being tracked and the originality of how this is presented. The unspoken assumption is therefore that the features are the main driver of our decision to purchase and wear one of these devices.

Brushing aside the pomp and pageantry...

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Enterprise employees are looking more and more at using wearable technology in the workplace. A recent piece of research showed that males aged 18-34 and those with children at home are most interested. They either own a wearable or want to buy one – and they want to use it at work.

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as that. More research papers than you can shake a stick at warn of the dangers of connecting business-critical data to smartwatches. It’s not just the...

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Wearable device manufacturers are proliferating at almost the same rate as wearable devices themselves. One look at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, or Mobile World Congress (MWC) in March, with their dedicated wearables rooms, made that plain to see.

With so much competition in the market, on platforms with limited memory, runtime and computing power, gaining an edge is key for OEMs. Increasingly, wearable devices have...

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To ensure the connectivity of wearable devices, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) appears to be the way to go – with limited computing power, the clue is in the name. Yet a recent post from Context Information Security has fired a warning shot over privacy issues in the BLE protocol.

Titled ‘The emergence of Bluetooth Low Energy’, the post addresses how scanning for devices running off BLE...

Despite holding a fond place in my heart as one of the OG smartwatches, it seemed inevitable that Pebble would find itself struggling against the titans of the industry.

Sources close to the company report that employees are unhappy with Pebble's direction as it attempts to fight Apple and Google

With the launch of Google's Android Wear platform, came a serious competitor with far more resources. This is something which has heated-up even more since the Apple Watch launched out of the...