Category: Technology News

Wearable technology could see greatly improved experience through tiny chip

A WiFi reflector chip may be all that wearables need to enhance battery life and speed them up.

NASA researchers have now developed a type of WiFi reflector chip that does not require the use of traditional transmitters, and that is now showing a massive amount of potential for improving the experience associated with wearable technology.

These chips reflect the signal instead of relying on the usual type of transmitter, which offers drastic improvements.

Through the use of this chip, it makes data transfer as much as three times as fast as it would be through regular WiFi connections, and it uses notably less power. When you put this into context through its use with wearable technology, what it means is that it will allow for considerably greater battery life, and a notably faster performance. Since these devices are waiting to take off in the near future, this could mean that this type of development could make the difference in boosting their appeal to consumers.

The reason is that this WiFi reflector chip could potentially overcome some of the biggest wearable technology challenges.

Wearable Technology - NASAOne of the main reasons that consumers haven’t been as impressed with wearables as they could be is because of the battery life. The average device doesn’t last much longer than a day with standard use, and consumers require more than that from a gadget that many of them expect to wear all day and all night (to take advantage of the sleep tracking, alerts, and other functions that they feel might benefit them if they don’t take the device off).

When the WiFi connection isn’t as demanding on the device’s battery power, it means that it won’t run out of juice as quickly, and it could mean that wearables will start to last longer and it may even become possible to make them smaller, since the battery is typically one of the largest components – if not the largest component – that the device must contain.

The size of smartwatches has also been one of the issues that has been causing the sale of these wearable technology devices to stagnate, particularly among women consumers. Should it become possible to reduce their size without cutting back on their battery lifespan, that may also bring about some considerable appeal among consumrs.

Mobile marketing is proving to be difficult, even for the pros

Marketers hare having a hard time trying to master advertising over smartphones and tablets.

According to recent data published in a report from DialogTech Insights, mobile marketing is causing quite a bit of challenge for marketers that are hoping to be able to reach consumers over their favorite devices.

The issue is primarily stemming from a lack of metrics to show whether or not their efforts are working.

The data from the firm said that mobile search and landing pages are bringing about a combined 81 percent of all calls for their customers. Equally, another 18.7 percent have been driven by mobile display and social. That said, when call attribution has not been established, mobile marketing companies don’t catch 49 percent of the conversions over smartphones and tablets. This brings about an inaccurate understanding of their return on investment (ROI) figures, and it places the optimization of their campaigns at risk.

This is happening despite the fact that mobile marketing sources have grown by 34 percent in half a year.

Mobile Marketing Proves DifficultOver the last complete year, there was a 77 percent increase recorded by the firm’s report. That report was based on an analysis of over 400,000 inbound calls that were placed to companies, and more than 60 million website sessions that had been tracked through the DialogTech platform called Voice360. That platform boasts more than 5,000 active customers spanning 35 different industries.

The data analysis in the report indicated that despite the fact that conversion rates are still significantly varied based on issues such as product and industry, the firm determined that there is an average 2.4 percent web form conversion rate on landing pages.

The DialogTech senior vice president of marketing, strategy, and analytics, Steve Griffiths, explained that “Call tracking is a form of lead attribution and marketing analytics technology marketers use it to track inbound phone calls back to the specific marketing source that originated them.” This means that call tracking makes it possible for mobile marketing companies to better understand their campaigns, ads, and keyword searches, as well as online and offline sources. A better understanding enhances the ability for optimization.