Welcome to The Wearable Weekly, your trusted guide to all things wearable tech. If you only have time to read one thing about wearables this week, this is it. Don’t forget to subscribe to The Wearable Weekly using the form below to make sure it hits your email inbox every week!
Statistics & Forecasts
Total Apple Watch sales predicted to double this holiday, reaching 12M in 2015 (Apple Insider)
Wearable tech up 932% on Black Friday at John Lewis (Retail Gazette)
80% of those unhappy with the Apple Watch feel that it has a “limited set of features” (CNET)
Smart Glass Market Worth 5.81 Billion USD by 2020 (PR Newswire)
Total wearable shipment volume for the quarter came to 21.0 million units, up 197.6% from the 7.1 million units shipped in 3Q14 says IDC (MobileSyrup)
Device Announcements
Swatch announced it is partnering with Visa to bring contactless payments to its Bellamy smartwatch (The Verge)
Omate announced its latest smartwatch, Rise, a $200 fully circular smartwatch (Engadget)
Mio Global launches fitness wearable line in India (Telegraph Times)
VFILES and Studio XO partner to bring line of wearable tech clothing collection,VFILES_XO (Mashable)
Moto 360 sport to go on sale later this month in Europe and in early January in the US (Forbes)
Nokia’s VR Camera Ozo now on sale for $60,000 (CNET)
Funding, Crowdfunding & M&A
Atheer Acquires ONtheGO Platforms to Further Advance Gesture Interaction with Augmented Reality Smart Glasses (Sys-Con Media)
VR film house, Baobab Studios, raises $6 million in funding led by Comcast Ventures (The Verge)
Major Milestones
Google launches a Cardboard Camera for VR viewing of photos (Google Blog)
Topcon and DAQRI announce collaboration on wearable technology for construction environments (Global Newswire)
Google Hangouts app updated on iOS to allow for replies on Apple Watch (The Verge)
HoloLens enabled Project Sidekick launches on the International Space Station with HoloLens units blasting to space (Digital Trends)
Google launches updated Santa Tracker app with Android Wear Support (9to5 Google)
Star Wars gets its first VR experience (TechCrunch)
Samsung launches a web browser for Gear VR (BuzzFeed News)
Rumours
Future Apple Watch straps may include flexible displays woven into the material, offering another way of presenting user messages or notifications (Cult of Mac)
HTC One smartwatch reportedly coming this February (Phone Arena)
Microsoft is working on its first piece of smart jewellery, a smart ring (Wareable)
The next Google Glass may be a monocle (TIME)
Subscribe to The Wearable Weekly
Don’t forget to subscribe to The Wearable Weekly using the form below to make sure it hits your email inbox every week!
