Tag: wearable tech

Wearable technology industry will be worth $34 billion in 4 years

| February 24, 2016

By the year 2020, CCS Insight is predicting that there will be 411 million wearables owned by consumers.

Analyst firm, CCS Insight has now give its wearable technology outlook an update, now predicting that by 2020, there will be 411 million smart wearable technology devices owned by consumers, and that the industry will be worth a massive $34 billion.

The firm also stated that, by the close of 2016, the wearables industry will have broken the $14 billion mark.

The predictions that it has made is that wrist-based wearable technology devices, such as many fitness trackers and smartwatches, will continue to top the list among the most popular gadgets in the category. The forecast the analyst has issued has stated that wrist-worn wearables will make up half of all sales in this category in the upcoming 12 months. Moreover, smartwatches are expected to make up 50 percent of the predicted 60 million device shipments that it expects to occur during that time.

This wearable technology update has changed since mid-2015, showing a 41 percent market share for the Apple Watch.

Wearable Technology Industry worth billionsAt that time, it said that there would be 20 million Apple Watches sold in 2015. That said, its data has now shown that during that time, the figure was strikingly lower; at only 9 million device sales.

Previously in February, another firm, Canalys, had indicated that its estimates were that in 2015, there were 12 million Apple Watches shipped. If that firm’s claims are true, that would give the company a much larger share, at about two thirds of the smartwatch marketplace. On the other hand, a week after that, Gartner released its figures and said that in 2015, the total number of smartwatch sales from all brands was 30 million. These varying numbers and measures make it evident that knowing what has already happened may be just as difficult to measure as predicting what will be occurring a few years down the road.

According to CCS Insight chief of research, Ben Wood, when discussing the wearable technology forecast report, “Given the rising consumer apathy toward smartphones, it is little wonder so many companies are chasing the rapidly growing opportunity presented by wearables. We’re particularly excited about the potential for augmented and virtual reality devices, and we predict 2016 will be a pivotal year.”

Pebble-backed Smart Strap wearable technology places a wallet on the wrist

| February 15, 2016

The new wearables from Fit Pay could soon make it possible for people to pay for products with a flick of the wrist.

Owners of Pebble Time wearable technology devices may soon be able to take advantage of the convenience of contactless mobile payments among the other benefits of wearing their gadgets.

A Pagaré smartstrap Kickstarter campaign was recently launched by Fit Pay to make this happen.

The funding for this wearable technology would be used to support its final production and to be able to bring it to market. The Pagaré payment smartstrap has NFC technology embedded into it, as well as card network tokenization. In that way, it will be possible for these wearables to be read by any POS terminal with an NFC reader, which is quite commonplace at retail checkout counters around the world.

Essentially, if the NFC contactless payments symbol is displayed at a checkout counter, this wearable technology is compatible.

To use the smartstrap wearables, a user would simply need to wave his or her wrist over the reader terminal at the POS counter. In that way, the transaction can be completed and the wearer would never have to take out a wallet and swipe or tap a card. It wouldn’t even require a smartphone to be used, as is the case with other types of mobile wallet that have been trying to achieve widespread adoption over the last few years.

According to the chief exec at Pebble, Eric Migicovsky, “It’s a great example of how our open platform allows Pebble to become even more useful in the everyday lives of more people.” There are still a few weeks left to the Fit Pay campaign, as it will run until March 9 in order to bring in the $120,000 it requires from backers in order to get these wearables moving forward.

The company is currently working directly with the suppliers for Pebble in order to be able to provide the smartstrap wearable technology in exactly the same materials, finishes and colors as the Pebble Time, the Time Steel and the Time Round smartwatches. In that way, form will not be sacrificed to function.