New innovations are revealed for a range of reasons. Some have been designed to make our day-to-day tasks easier, while others help us monitor our lifestyle. And, with the latest developments, we don’t need to carry around our favorite gadgets by hand — many of them are now wearable. In 2016, 61 million fitness, activity, and sports trackers were sold along with 14 million wearable cameras and 15 million virtual and augmented reality headsets. QUIZMAN, retailers of men’s shirts, tell us more:
Making technology attractive to buyers
Understandably, the wearable tech must be aesthetically pleasing. It has to look attractive and be something that people would happily wear their regular items. This has been difficult, especially when it comes to items such as Bluetooth headsets and smartwatches, as they can often look out of place.
One example of this is smartwatches. The latest releases from brands such as Samsung are much more stylish and look more like a watch that’d be bought for fashion purposes. With colored leather straps and a circular face, brands are moving away from square screens and plastic straps as they realize that smart-watches that look very digitalized don’t go down as well with the target market.
Another example where fashion has been considered is with the collaboration between Levi’s Jacquard and Google. They created wearable technology that could be worn seamlessly with other clothes. The Levi’s Commuter Trucker Jacket comes with its own app and you can control music with a few swipes of the sleeve.
The health benefits
People are starting to use their wearable tech to monitor their health and well-being.
For example, in conjunction with global beauty brand L’Oréal, researchers developed a wearable device that could monitor UV exposure. Clip it onto a denim jacket or individuals can wear it on their thumb to get an accurate reading of the current UV levels and take appropriate action to keep their skin protected.
Then there is the health tag. Link them up with your phone to track your activity, sleep, heart rate, breathing patterns and stress levels.
Potential future collaborations could be made so that wearable tech can help our health services too. There has been discussion around the possibility that well-known fitness tracker, Fitbit, could help doctors predict how a patient may react to chemotherapy.
What do forecasts reveal?
Statistics show that 411 million smart wearable devices will be sold in 2020, in a market worth $34 billion. But, what type of wearables will they be? CCS Insight predicts the following number of sales by the device in 2020:
- Wristbands — 164 million
- Watches — 110 million
- Eyewear — 97 million
- Wearable cameras — 25 million
- Hearables — 9 million
- Tokens, clip-on, and jewellery — 4 million
- Other — 2 million
It doesn’t seem that the share of the market will change drastically. In the future, it seems that wristbands and watches will still be dominating the market. And, with 97 million eyewear pieces to be sold in 2020, it will be interesting to see how these will be developed and designed to be truly wearable for all.
Sources
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/paullamkin/2016/02/17/wearable-tech-market-to-be-worth-34-billion-by-2020/#1c57c093cb55
- https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2018/january/northwestern-researchers-develop-worlds-smallest-wearable-device/
- https://mashable.com/2017/09/25/google-levis-jacquard-jacket-review/?europe=true#iHsWry2QtSqP
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/01/cancer-fitbit-treatment-chemotherapy
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