Although smartwatches and augmented reality glasses have appeared to be a promising category, new players are coming.
Wearables have been appearing on the market in many different forms, with several devices coming in the form of smartwatches, as well as smart clothing, headsets, and other types that can be attached to the body in some way.
Some predictions, however, are now starting to say that wearable technology worn on the ear will be the next wave.
According to the IDC Asia Pacific associate vice president for big data, analytics, and software, Craig Stires, “There’s some interesting information you can capture through the ear. We’ve been looking at things like wrist wearables, but the ear can capture things like oxygen levels, electrocardiograms, and body temperature.” This has opened up the opportunity to develop wearable technology that would be able to perform at a very impressive level. It would also mean that an entirely new sub-category of these devices would open up.
It has been predicted that hearable technology wearables could be worth $5 billion by 2018.
That forecast was made by the Wifore Consulting chief technology officer and founder, Nick Nunn. The prediction of this U.K. firm would mean that the hearable category of wearable technology would be worth the same amount as the entire industry of these devices at its present level.
Fans of wearable tech enjoy the ability to use these devices in a kind of “synced lifestyle”, where their devices integrate perfectly into their daily life. According to the PSFK research firm’s “Future of Wearable Tech” report, which was issued in 2014, that mentality has helped in the development of devices that can be worn on just about every body part. Moreover, it has also brought the worlds of technology and fashion into the same environment.
However, Hunn has stated that there is one primary factor which may be overlooked by brands offering wearables, so far. That is that “Sound drives the bulk of our technology use.” Moreover, the only type of wearable technology that has already fully gained social acceptance and mainstream use is earbuds. As a result, he feels that it is those devices that will soon be experiencing a “revolution in capability”.
Germany will also be stepping ahead of the United Kingdom when it comes to corporate adoption of wearables.
Ipswitch has recently released the results of a survey that found that Germany and France will be leaps and bounds ahead of the United Kingdom next year with regards to their intentions of using wearable technology within corporations.
The survey examined the number of wearables that will be integrated into the workplace over the next year.
The Ipswitch research looked into the use of wearable technology that will be connected with the corporate IT infrastructure in a number of different countries and organizations. It found a number of different types of insight, such as the indication that there has been little thought given to mobile security and network performance as a result of this integration. Only 13 percent of the participating organizations in the study stated that they had formed a policy in order to cover the impact and management of wearables as they enter the workplace.
German and French businesses are adopting wearable technology at a rate that is faster than the United Kingdom.
What the research determined was that 33 percent of companies in Germany stated that they plan to bring wearables that are company owned into their workplaces within the next year. In France, that figure for 2015 was 34 percent. In the United Kingdom, about 25 percent of participating businesses claimed that they had similar intentions for the tech.
Beyond the investigation into the corporate adoption of wearables, this research also examined the attitudes that companies have with regards to employee owned gadgets entering the workplaces. Among the respondents, 36 percent said that they believed that they would be experiencing an “influx” of the number of employees who would be wearing smartwatches and other similar mobile devices in 2015.
In terms of employee owned wearable technology use, it was German businesses that expected to see the highest increase in the devices. Among the respondents from that country, 41 percent were expecting this nature of influx next year. In France, it was 36 percent and it was 33 percent in the United Kingdom.
