Rumor Watch: Apple is in the round corner.

via MacRumors >>

In the developing form-factor cage match between looped and squared, Apple may have chosen to step into the ring with round. At least according to some leaks from the East. I am also putting my money on circular.

It looks like circles are cropping up all over the place now.

What goes around? Samsung's upcoming smart watch of course. (Patent Pending.)

via Android Authority >>

There's nothing like a good form factor battle to get a market going.

I'm not sure if it's just confirmation bias on my part, or the wearables market really is the hottest and most exciting tech trend since the introduction of the white iPhone.

Wearables-related headlines are all over the place, from popular tech blogs to all the major business magazines like Forbes (which often indicates the peak of hype). I'm still an agnostic coward when it comes to predicting the future of these gadgets. I don't see any network effect yet, and I don't know one single person who wears one, even though I know people who work for companies which make these.

Let's face it: the market still needs a poster child. And some killer apps. And, of course, a decisive form factor.

So, Samsung has their square Gear, but Samsung is one company they never met a platform or a form factor they didn't like. No company spreads the risk like Samsung. There is little doubt that Samsung would love to corner the market on smart watches. Don't like square wear? It looks like Samsung is getting ready to make a profound turnaround in smart watches.

Did Samsung just re-invent the circular smart watch?

Is the smart watch market about to go full circle? Will one form factor prevail?

So, how is the market for wearables shaping up? Is round & retro the new flat & black?

Predicting consumer tastes is always the hard part. Let's look at the market for smart watches. Though connected watches have been around for more than a decade from vendors such as Sony Ericsson and Polar, they never caught on as mainstream accessories.

If I had been a smart watch designer, I would understand the temptation to create a freeze-dried version of the screens we all know so well: shrink down the familiar smartphone display, turn it sideways, and add a wrist strap.

But given that Google's Android Wear platform and SDK support both round and rectangular watch form factors, I have to wonder which shape will lead the market. While the popular wearables to date such as Samsung's Galaxy Gear and Pebble's Smartwatch are rectangular, I have to say that the retro round-styled watches do look like the could catch on. I've been pretty cynical about a real market for these gadgets in general, but I'm starting to see something here. Please check the videos below for devices from Motorola and a company called Kairos.

So, will the MOTO 360 become the RAZR of the smart watch world or will it be hip to be square? Only time will tell.

Is this the smart watch UI of the future? The Wrist Twist?

via Technology Review >>
Project Pages >>

The market for smart watches won't really take off until someone gets the UI just right. Did these researchers at Carnegie Mellon University just do that? Watch the video:

The Delayed Dozen. Forget the term "technology disruption." In reality hot trends take more than a decade to get noticed.

Back in the year 2000 I was working with Nokia's smart home unit. There were researchers developing Bluetooth-controlled lights, home-control tablets, connected refrigerators, internet connected televisions. I met people in other parts of the company working on the e-wallet, mobile couponing, and location-based social networking. You know, all the stuff making headlines now. It was all there then. But the molasses of reality can cause a sticky mess.

This is the way trends work. They take more than a decade to work their way through the system. In my experience, 12 years is the average time. All the pieces have to be perfectly in place and, most importantly, consumers have to be ready. The end user is always the unknown variable in the equation. The big X to isolate.

Yes, rolling out new devices and services can be a complex formula. The technology enablers are the easy bits to spot early on. Things are proposed, researched, developed, standardized, funded, and shown at TED -- all before reaching the mainstream media.


So what's the rage now? Why wearables of course. And mobile wellbeing. And life logging. But please check out some of the devices from Polar from more than 10 years ago. PC-connected watches which tracked and collected data on your running and walking distance, pace, altitude, temperature, heart rate. Yes, I'm sorry to break it to you but this smart watch stuff is really nothing new at all. We know Apple has been assembling a high-caliber wearables team since at least 2010. We know that the companies which make the sensors and other components have been pushing their goods for years before that.

Technology trends have long and sometimes painful gestation periods. And then they crawl before they can walk. But then they begin to run.

This figures. Smart watches? A brand new hot trend? No, these things take time.

Wearable computing for hygiene behavior tracking.

Medgadget Story >>

"Please Note: Employees must wash hands... and wear these special behavior-tracking wrist bands."

On one hand I see this concept as a good idea, on the other hand as rather intrusive.

The concept of gadgets tracking our healthcare habits isn't so strange any longer, and it will get less so going forward. Many electric toothbrushes, for example, monitor the amount of time the user spends brushing and some even go further, tracking such things as pressure on the gums. Smartphone apps can record the level of daily activity and prod the owner to get moving, and I've read about specialized computer mice which can check the user's stress levels via the fingertip and advise accordingly.

But now the same technical components can be used by employers to monitor as well as change workers' behavior. Here's a wrist-worn device from a startup called IntelligentM which can track employees seven days per week, 24 hours per day. The device works using accelerometers and RFID to track where a hospital employee is and how properly and how often they wash their hands.

Is this an example of the use of sensors for good hygiene instead of evil? I can see the argument given the stats mentioned in the video below. But, on the other hand, it is a bit Big Brother like. Just hope you don't get called to hospital room 101 for employee evaluation.

Tweet

Wearing, thin. The white hot mobile trend: ubiquitous computing & thin clients is wear it's at.

SAMSUNG (SMART)WATCH CONFIRMED >>

KEY MOBILE TRENDS: wearable computing, sensors, multi-device ownership, smartwatches, wellbeing, ubiquitous computing

Talking shoes from Google, contextual-sensing jewelry from Samsung. Big brands and small, device vendors had better get to wear the action is.

You will certainly be hearing lots about wearable devices over the coming year, and some of you might get tired of the exaggerated stories and the miserable puns. But when hype reaches its peak is when it's really time to evaluate market potential and write down business-development plans.

I've been hearing about ubiquitous computing since the turn of the century. The long-term vision of migrating machine interaction into everyday things and away from personal computers and handsets has excited technology executives to such a degree, that most large tech companies and campuses formed UC units. Now, the enablers are nearly in place and products will rain onto the market during the coming years. Many products will fail to deliver, but a few will really change the way we live and breath.

Google Glass and Google's talking shoe concept (please see video below) are two examples of keeping people contextually informed and constantly connected to the grid. Every smartphone vendor worth its salt will be sprouting sensor-filled mobile accessories during the coming years.

While we know the components enabling this key trend, as is so often the case, the supporting business models are the real uncertainty. Some legitimate mobile healthcare-related services will prove to be a good value for healthcare providers and individuals, but leveraging the vast amounts of data collected could lead to a trade of atoms for bits, that is, lower-cost accessories in return for some of the contextual data.

I suspect most large handset vendors have their wearable computing in-house experts and major mobile platforms are working on robust APIs to support the development of an array of accessories and applications. Vendors who aren't prepared could be left out in the cold.

So, looking forward, computing power and sensors will be everyware. Are you ready to uncover the opportunities?

Platitude & attitudes: this shoe from Google/Adidas will make life much tougher:

An Apple watch could be a genius big-data play. Time will tell but the potential is there.

ARS TECHNICA STORY >>

TRENDS TO NOTE: wearable computing, big data, sensor fusion, smartwatches.

An Apple watch? It seems like this prediction has been made several times before. But you know what they say about a broken clock...

Mobile watch accessories have been around for almost a decade. Back in 2006, Sony Ericsson together with Fossil introduced a sleek Bluetooth watch. It acted as a companion to Sony Ericsson handsets providing the bearer with some basic connectivity back to the phone. And Microsoft and partners brought out a series of "SPOT" connected watches around the same time. Despite many good efforts, there was little sincere consumer interest.

But smartwatches and fitness bands have become a resuscitated trend over the past year. (Please see the related smartwatch signals on my blog here.) Sony, Motorola, Jawbone, Nike, and others have introduced clever wrist-worn devices to keep users connected to their devices and to their bodies.

Now it looks like Apple is about to join in (beyond the nano that is). Some possible product leaks out of Apple are consistent and solid, and it is known that Apple has been gathering the talent to make a market for wearable computing products. So, will Apple be the company which gets the watch accessory spot on?

There is interesting speculation about Apple's implementation of extra sensors in such a device. I could imagine that an advanced wrist-worn computer could constantly collect information such as blood pressure, pulse/heart rate, body temperature, stress levels, and possibly sleep patterns. By combining such data with info from environmental sensors such as accelerometers, thermometers, barometers, altimeters, GPS receivers, air-quality sensors, and of course time & date could lead to a collection of vast amounts of correlated information. And it is exactly this sort of sensor fusion that big data is all about.

Apple has made stickiness an art form. And in an age of increased product commoditization, holding on tightly and fighting portability has been a very smart strategy to fight substitute products. [Americans would know this as the "Roach Motel" approach.] Apple could now be working on bringing more consumer content inside its walled garden: years' worth of data about a user's body, exercise patterns, and environmental exposure. This would be an extremely valuable addition to Apple's vault of bits and bytes.

Smartphones have become flat, dull, look-alike devices. Wearable accessories and big data are two trends that could break the monotony in the coming years. Just look at what Google is doing with Glass. Smartphone vendors would be wise to chime in before it's too late.


HP's Mobile Health blood pressure Monitoring Solution:
Constantly feeds info to the cloud on a patient's vitals.

More "big proactive." Stressing big data with the Neumitra Bandu. This watch collects stress data and advises.

via Ecouterre >>

Neumitra COMPANY WEBSITE >>

Here is another good example of using big data for the power of good. The Bandu from a Bostn-based startup called Neumitra is a watch which has sensors which are able to collect info from the body about stress levels. The data is then uploaded to the cloud where it is stored and analyzed on an on-going basis. The service provides feedback on relaxation and also has a location-based element as it layers stress on the map.

So please take five and watch the Bandu video to get a better understanding.

Is it time to watch the smartch space? Will devices like Sony's "SmartWatch" slam the Garmin's and Polar's of this world?

CNET STORY >>

Sony's "Four-Screen strategy" (the tablet, the televsion, the PC, the smartphone) now adds a fifth element: the Android-based SmartWatch. Will this convergence kill the market for advanced sports watches?


Last week at CES, Sony introduced a device the company is calling the "SmartWatch." The SmartWatch is essentially a external, wrist-worn screen for Android smartphones. The use cases with such connected watches are easy enough to envision: read text messages during a jog, see calendar entries, answer in-coming phone calls Dick Tracy style.

The general idea of such evolved hybrid watches is not new: over the past few years, products such as Apple's iPod nano, RIM's inPulse BlackBerry Watch, Sony Ericsson's LiveView, and Motorola's MotoACTV have been introduced to the market.

The smart watch market is developing for real now and some of the products have impressive features and specs: touchscreens, Bluetooth, GPS, accelerometers, open operating systems, music players, app stores. Just like camera makers and PND vendors have been getting hit by the expanding smartphone market, is the smart watch market about to pound the market for dedicated watches from the likes of Garmin, Polar, and Suunto?

Let's watch this space.