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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....
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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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...
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It’s official: San Francisco-based fitness wearable manufacturer Fitbit is preparing to go public.
The documents, issued on May 7, reveal a company which is, on the surface, in good health; quarterly revenue tripling year over year, from $108.8m in Q114 to $336.8m in Q115. The number of paid users has also rocketed comparatively; from 2.6m at the end of 2013, to 6.7m the same time the year after, and 9.5m by the end of Q115, while device numbers have grown from 4.5m to 10.9m...
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A research article discusses the issues surrounding the current Wi-Fi standard for connectivity on wearable devices and proposes a new standard, called Wi-Bo.
Wi-Bo, short for Wireless Body, would have a frequency of between 10 and 20GHz and a maximum range of two metres. As analyst and report author Andrew Sheehy explains: “It seems that what is needed is a completely new wireless networking standard.
“Wi-Fi is a short-range wireless networking standard that is used to...
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Research released by Salesforce has revealed that for those who have already adopted wearables, enterprise uptake won’t be far away.
79% of adopters polled said wearables would be, or already are, strategic to their company’s future success, while a further 76% reported improvements in their business performance since deploying wearables in the enterprise. 86% plan to increase their wearables spend over the next 12 months.
Not surprisingly, and with one eye on the upcoming...
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Juniper Research forecasts that wearable advertising spend will reach $68.7 million (£46.5m) in 2018, a huge leap from $1.5m (£1.02m) by the end of this year – and the growth of the Apple Watch will fuel this step up.
It’s a concept which has had marketers licking their lips in anticipation for months – another screen on which to display ads and sell dollars. Many have laid out their ideas for how this shift will take place; Jeff Lawson, CEO of cloud communications provider Twilio,
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More than 75 million wearable devices will be deployed in enterprise and industrial environments between 2014 and 2020.
That’s the take from research and consulting firm Tractica, who argues smartwatches will beat fitness trackers and smart glasses to be the most popular workplace wearable.
Among the runners and riders examined in the report, entitled ‘Wearable Devices for Enterprise and Industrial Markets’, are Fitbit, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, and of...
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Here’s an interesting example of wearable technology: Researchers from the Human-Computer Interaction Group at the University of Rochester have developed a user interface for Google Glass which gives real-time feedback to public speakers on volume modulation and speaking rate.
The premise is straightforward. Given public speaking is often cited as a primary fear of many people – respondents in a 2013 poll said they feared public speaking more than they feared being buried...
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Kaspersky lab security researcher Roman Unuchek has written on how the authentication method in popular smart wristbands allows a third party to connect to the device, execute commands and even extract data.
The worrying findings came after a multiple month investigation, after Unuchek had initially attempted to connect his personal wristband – which remains nameless – and found he could easily connect to his colleague’s Nike+ FuelBand SE.
Using some code already...
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The analysts at Juniper Research have gotten the tea leaves and crystal ball out again, and predicted annual revenues from connected healthcare and fitness services will approach $2bn by 2019, almost six times the value estimated for this year.
The findings, which appear in the report “Smart Wireless Devices: CE, Enterprise, Fitness, Healthcare, Payments 2015-2019”, examine the prevalence and market value of ‘smart wearable devices’, which Juniper defines as...
Wearable technology providers still have a lot to do to convince the general public they need one of their products, according to new research.
A whopping 75% of the 2000 UK adults polled by Hive by British Gas said they couldn’t see how wearable tech would make their lives easier. Almost one in 10 (9%) polled said they thought wearables would make their lives more difficult.
This isn’t the first time Brits have been less than convinced by the pull of smartwatches and eyewear, although back in 2014 it...
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A survey from experiential agency Fizz Experience has found while almost half of UK respondents were aware of the Apple Watch, only one in five had adequate knowledge of the product.
The research, which was conducted before the (second) unveiling of the Apple Watch, found almost half of Britons were willing to spend up to £111 on wearable tech. This...
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After one previous launch, endless hype, and media keyboards being pummelled into submission, the Apple Watch has finally been fully unveiled at a press event in California.
First, what we learned (or were reminded of):
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Semiconductor solutions provider Broadcom has introduced a new smartwatch platform that reduces power consumption for Android Wear devices.
Broadcom claims the platform reduces power usage by up to 40% by offering a smaller form factor, shrinking the circuit board size by a similar figure and reconfiguring certain features, such as offloading some tasks from the applications processor to less power-intensive parts of the system. With this, OEMs can also add features, or include a larger...
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Analyst house Juniper Research has released a new paper asserting ‘invisible’ wearables – hardware which is indistinguishable from non-smart technology – will provide a key market opportunity by 2020.
In a report entitled ‘The World in 2020: A Technology Vision’, made available for free download here, the analysts argue many wearables companies are...
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Analyst house CCS Insight has put out its latest global wearables forecast, and predicted that wearable shipments will jump to 75 million in 2015 – a 158% increase on last year.
Not surprisingly, a large amount of this number will be provided by the Apple Watch, due for release in April. CCS Insight expects Apple will account for 20 million of these, representing over a quarter of the market.
Yet the analyst firm sees this point as key – if the Apple Watch succeeds, then it...