Tag: Wearable technology news

Wearable technology is adored by Great Britain

| October 20, 2014

This market is rapidly becoming very popular and adoption is increasing quite swiftly.

Data that has recently been released by YouGov has shown that in Great Britain, there is a rapid adoption of personal tech among consumers, and these gadgets include wearable technology.

One in ten people, says the data, will be using wearables as this category of the market takes off.

At the moment, YouGov reports that six percent of the population of Great Britain owns some kind of wearable technology device. This represents approximately 2.8 million people. The types of devices that fall within this category include activity trackers, fitness bands, and smartwatches. That said, while the numbers are already strikingly high when considering that this category is still practically within its infancy, the firm expects that those figures will double to 13 percent of the population, or 6.1 million people, before the close of next year.

The next spike in wearable technology adoption is expected when the Apple Watch goes up for sale.

Wearable technology like by Great BritainApple’s entry into the wearables market is predicted to be a considerable driver for adoption rates, though the size of the impact won’t be seen until it actually happens at the start of next year. Ahead of that time, it will be the holiday shopping season that will make the biggest contribution to the figures.

The figures from a survey conducted by YouGov show that by the end of this year, one in ten people, which means about 4.7 million individuals, will own some form of wearable technology device.

The challenge that developers and manufacturers will now be facing will be in attempting to encourage those who own the wearables to actually continue to using them. At the moment, the majority of the gadgets that have already been purchased are focused on fitness. However, 37 percent of the people who were surveyed said that they have it just so that they will be able to keep up with the latest in technology.

While this may look good in sales figures, it also shows that companies still have a certain distance to travel before wearable technology will have been worked into the typical lifestyle of the majority of consumers.

Wearable technology could soon be in the form of a tattoo

| October 7, 2014

NewDealDesign, the creator of the popular Fitbit fitness tracker, has now taken on a new wearables challenge.

According to recent tech news, NewDealDesign, which is the company behind the Fitbit wearable technology that is worn in order to track steps and calculate burned calories during workouts, among other things, is now taking on a whole new challenge.

This leap forward in wearables has been called Project Underskin and it is looking at devices from a whole new angle.

This move by NewDealDesign (NDD) is the result of having accepted a challenge from Co.Design, an online design website, that asked the company to look at what wearable technology would be when it goes “beyond the wrist.” In order to address this challenge, NDD took it upon itself to create Project Underskin, which is a type of “smart digital tattoo” that could be implanted into the hand of the wearer.

This would create a kind of built-in wearable technology for health and fitness tracking and a great deal more.

The goal of Project Underskin is to use a tattoo that functions like wearables that would provide health and fitness tracking, unlocking doors through enabled NFC tech, and even exchanging information with other people simply by shaking their hands. All of this would be done through touch because of the implant within the hand of the person with this “tattoo”.wearable technology - tattoo

NDD feels that this highly futuristic sounding wearable technology could be as close as five years away.

What is possibly even more interesting than what the tattoo wearables could actually do is that NDD has stated that based on the current pace and level of electronics research, this could become a reality in as short a time as half a decade. They also said that the flexible display of this type of a mobile device would be the most difficult challenge to try to overcome.

The components that one would expect to be the toughest – such as the ability to remain charged through the human body itself, the requisite communicators and sensors, and the actual implantation – would all be notably easier to put into place than the wearable technology display and its requirement for very high flexibility.