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Don’t expect to see too many wearable devices like Apple Watches and Fitbits under Christmas trees this year—they’re not on many wish lists.eMarketer has significantly revised its estimates of wearable-device users in the US. The still-young category showed early promise, but usage has not expanded beyond early adopters. In October 2015, eMarketer expected usage among US adults to grow more than 60% this year. But according to its latest forecast, it will only grow 24.7%, as smart watches in particular have failed to impress consumers. This year, 39.5 million US adults will use a wearable device (with internet connectivity) at least once a month, far less than the 63.7 million previously forecast. Smart watches haven’t caught on in large numbers, primarily because of their high price point and lack of definitive use case. This year, usage of wearables will reach just 15.8% of the population. That penetration rate is only expected to grow to 21.1% by 2020....
Asia Pacific was home to 34% of the worlds, connected wearables last year. It is estimated that by 2025, the global wearable technology market will be worth some 70 billion U.S. dollars. So far, fitness and health related functions are dominating the space, as well as devices that can form linkage to functions currently available in a Smartphone, such as GPS. But is this just a playground for the big tech companies and early adopters? Or is this a significant shift in the way we will lead our lives?
The key question this piece of market research aims to discover, is whether or not we actually know our consumers well enough, in terms of their acceptance and expectations of such products. Are consumers in Asia Pacific playing catch up, or are they actually leading this trend in consumer wearable technology? How can marketers and manufacturers succeed in this area?...
Though the Internet of Things era has only just started, it may already be broken.
Like generals fighting the last war instead of the next one, many companies working to build the Internet of Things seem to be stuck in the smartphone and tablet era, embracing approaches that will soon be obsolete, if they aren’t already.
Today, smartphones are powerful hubs surrounded by less intelligent objects. Each device is managed and operated from a few centralized data centers. This is not yet a major issue as devices currently last only a year or two before being decommissioned. The cost of managing data centers is limited in duration and underwritten by a constant flood of replacement devices with short lives.
Not so in the Internet of Things era: an LED lightbulb has an expected life of 20+ years; aircraft are expected to remain in service for decades; the average car on the road in the US is now more than a decade old.
Applying a centralized cloud-based business model to these devices will mean decades of expense without decades of associated revenue. At IBM we already see clients that are struggling with device-related services that have failed to meet revenue targets, but cannot be switched off for fear of angering an installed base....
Too many technology-led companies see wearable devices as simply the next wave of smartphones or accessories and pay lip service to aesthetics and style, according to Saverio Romeo, principal analyst at Beecham Research, who has detailed his opinion on the future of the wearable technology market in a new report.
The report highlights mistakes being made by many companies trying to grab a share of the much hyped wearable tech opportunity and provides a very different vision and set of predictions, compared with much of today’s thinking.
“Current market forecasts are based on a smartphone-centric view of wearable technology,” said Saverio Romeo. “We see wearable tech as playing a critical role in the drive to greater connectivity and the Internet of Things, where we will interact with intelligent spaces through wearable devices. But while these devices may have some smartphone functionality, they will be much more than smartphones.”...
Is there a wearable that tracks all of the predictions on wearables? (Asking for a friend.)
Today’s wearable devices will likely experience the same rise and descent as products like the Flip camera or the single-purpose e-reader, Forrester Research predicts in its latest report.
Wearables “will flourish all through 2015 until 2016 when their functionality is assumed by other devices you are already carrying anyway, from obvious contenders like smartphones to more intriguing ones,” writes Forrester analyst James McQuivey. An example of possibly more intriguing tech would be sensor-laden headphones, he says, which suggests a “strong reason for Apple agreeing to buy Beats Electronics for $3 billion.
”There are a handful of reasons why McQuivey says still-new wearable tech will go the way of the e-reading market in the U.S., which the research firm believes will shrink from a mature market of 25-plus million owners in 2012 to a mere seven million owners by 2017....
This is why Google's launch yesterday of Android Wear, its wearable platform, is likely to see so much interest. Developers still need to build the "killer app" designed uniquely for wearables that will make the devices compelling for still-skeptical mainstream consumers. Now, with Android Wear, they have a major platform to build for . In a new report from BI Intelligence, we make sense of the current wearable apps landscape, look at why app ecosystems are currently so minimally stocked, explore the types of wearables that are likeliest to take off, and try to pinpoint a few "killer apps" that could make the devices truly compelling. We also look at the strong potential for Google or Apple to instantly take over the app market....
Wearable computing isn't just a trend for fitness companies. Here's why you need to start thinking about your strategy now.
Several years ago during the holiday time, my digital experience consultancy AnswerLab decided to invest in a Fitbit for every employee. This decision was part of our ongoing effort to make AnswerLab a great work environment, and a way to get our team thinking about the future of how humans interact with technology. Becoming a Fitbit office upped everyone's general awareness about health and fitness and broadened our awareness of technology design. It reminded us of how far society has come: from using a computer mouse to swiping screens of diminishing sizes to using devices that connect the organic with technology as part of an entire interconnected ecosystem. Fitbit is now a leading example of the rapidly-growing wearable computing category. In fact, wearables and user experience were huge topics at SXSW in Austin, Texas, this month.
To get a pulse on how companies are thinking about wearables and their businesses, AnswerLab asked some of our peers in the digital product and marketing arenas to weigh in. An overwhelming majority (89 percent) of digital executives questioned believe that wearables will gain mass-market adoption in the next three years. However, only 27 percent are currently working on integrating wearables in their development plans. (You can read more about AnswerLab's wearables survey here.)...
Who is the audience for the Samsung Gear smartwatch, Google Glass, and the plethora of personal trackers saturating the market? Harris Interactive conducted a survey of 2,250 US adults to find out. It turns out that these consumers are confused and worried about this new technology, and that may be limiting its growth.
“We believe that the category’s essentially limitless possibilities are actually working against it, making it harder for consumers to wrap their collective heads around the segment. People need to understand what wearable tech is and how it can benefit them,” says Aaron Kane, senior research director at Harris Interactive....
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Marketers would love to know what's going on inside your head when you watch their commercials — and now they can find out, thanks to a technique called neuromarketing.
Brainsights is a Toronto company that specializes in scanning people's brainwaves in order to see if they're responding to companies' messages and content, whether they're emotionally engaged, and whether they'll remember any of it."
For advertisers, for anybody in communications, this is kind of a holy trinity," said Dan Iwasa-Madge, the company's head of products and analysis during a presentation at the Wearable Entertainment and Sportsconference in Toronto Tuesday....
Twelve months ago, wearable technology was the preserve of geeks in virtual-reality headsets and early adopters touting clunky smartwatches. Not any more. A recent report predicted Britons would spend £104.7million on wearable technology this Christmas as consumers snap up fitness gadgets, intelligent watches and gaming systems. This is just the beginning. Wearables could be the defining technology of the next decade. You may still own a smartphone in 2020, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
By 2015, there are likely to be three key wearable trends: the huge growth of smartwatches, the arrival of technology integrated into clothing and the acceleration of the use of wearables in business. You probably know a little about smartwatches courtesy of some high-profile launches. Next year, the battle for your wrist will go into overdrive with the world’s major consumer electronics firms launching innovative devices....
It is a super exciting time for wearable entrepreneurs! The early generation of wearables has offered a promising step towards what could be achieved over time with the new generation of wearable products.
The wearable industry is still in its infancy. Although wearable makers have spent significant effort to marry hardware and software technologies and build cool products, there is still a lot to be discovered, learned, and applied in this industry.
As a wearable maker, there are six elements to consider and successfully navigate in order to build a winning product that will be adopted by the majority of the population:...
...Given how quickly the wearables market is developing, Snodgrass believes marketers need to carve out a small amount of budget now to do what he calls micro-tests. “Focus half of your mobile team on trying to understand and explore how this new market works. At the least, the market share for mobile will flow naturally into the market share for wearables.
”Schonfeld concurs, saying marketing teams will benefit from some wearables-spurred experimentation — even if it doesn’t yet lead to integrating wearables in the marketing strategy. “For quantified-self wearables, it’s all about the data. How can brands tap into that data or enhance it to actually deliver value to consumers? Glass is more experimental, but thinking about ways to market on a heads-up screen could lead to broader insights about mobile marketing in general.”...
Since 2009, investors have poured over half a billion dollars into wearable tech startups.
This isn’t surprising when you consider that wearable tech (including smart glasses, watches, and fitness bands) is still an early adopter market and already estimated to be worth $3 billion.
In 2016, estimates suggest that 100 million wearable tech devices will be shipped. That’s ten times the number of devices expected to ship in 2014.
So, how does this affect our jobs as marketers? What might we be doing differently in 2016 or 2020, if wearable technology reaches the level of adoption that’s expected?...
The ‘Quantified Self’ is a thrilling prospect for some: Massive datasets about oneself can be a new route to self-discovery. But for most of us, the idea of continuous self-tracking is a novelty that results in shallow insights. Just ask anyone who has bought a Fitbit or Jawbone Up which now lies dusty at the bottom of a junk drawer.
For the Quantified Self movement to become truly useful, our gadgets will have to move beyond the novelty of gratuitous behavioral data, which we might call a ‘first degree of meaning.’ They’ll have to address a second degree of meaning, where self-tracking helps motivate people toward self-improvement, and a third degree of meaning, where people can use data to make better choices in the moments when a decision is actually being made. We’re moving closer to those goals, but we’re still not thinking rigorously about the challenges involved. So let’s start....
Google has unveiled a contact lens that monitors glucose levels in tears, a potential reprieve for millions of diabetics who have to jab their fingers to draw their own blood as many as 10 times a day.
The famous line from Socrates that the unexamined life is not worth living has taken on a new meaning in the modern era. A wave of companies, many of them start-ups funded through sites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, is creating wearable electronic tracking devices for nearly every part of the human body, from brainwave-monitoring headbands to smart socks. And analysts expect the industry to explode over the next five years.
Retail revenue from wearable technology is predicted to jump from about $1.4 billion in 2013 to as much as $19 billion in 2018, according to a new study from Juniper Research. Here’s a quick industry snapshot. If you want in, move fast: There’s hardly any room left on the human body that isn’t about to be covered by a device....
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Devices haven't won over users other than early adopters. Apparently we don't need talking jewelry, IoT dog leashes and wearable little black cocktail dresses that sing! ;-)