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.
Industry Highlights
The Chinese military sees wearable tech as a national security risk. A warning from the Chinese military to soldiers on the use of wearable tech as a potential security threat was one of the major stories in the news this week in the wearable space.
Wearables are watching you. CNET covered a talk by BioBeats founder David Plans at the Nimbus Ninety Ignite Conference in London where the founder cautioned the potentially “Orwellian” dark side of wearable tech where insurance companies and other organizations could use health data against us in a “sinister” way.
Apple Watch bug makes it easy for thieves to steal and use. A recent 9to5Mac post identified a bug in the Apple Watch which would allow a thief to bypass the passcode to pair a stolen Apple Watch with an iPhone.
Statistics & Forecasts
About 2.7 million VR headsets, including versions aimed at app and content developers, could be sold in 2015, according to technology consultancy KZero (Reuters)
Mobile augmented reality market in China is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 110% from 2015-2019, driven by the large mobile user base in the country according to Technavio (Technavio)
64% of women tweeted positive feelings about the Apple Watch compared with 53% of men says CrowdFlower survey (The Times of India)
101 Million Smartwatch Shipments by 2020 with Apple and Google Leading The Way according to recent forecasts from IHS Techonlogy (Forbes)
LG Display accounted for US$186 million of the global smartwatch panel shipment worth $204 million in the January-March period according to data from DisplaySearch (Yonhap)
45 percent of US consumers want a health wearable or app that monitors “every aspect” of their health according to a Havas Worldwide survey (MobiHealthNews)
Global wearables technology market to hit $16.1 billion by the end of 2015 according to a new Visiongain report (FierceMobileHealthcare)
64.55% of PhoneArena survey participants don’t own a single wearable while 23.99% claimed that they carry a smartwatch (PhoneArena)
Device Announcements
Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition for GalaxyS6 now on sale (TechCrunch)
Samsung revealed details about its upcoming smartwatch in the release of development tools which confirm a round watch with the use of a rotating bezel as a new use interaction and two variants: 3G and tethered (Engadget)
Samsung launched ARTIK, a new platform for connected things (TechCrunch)
Fujitsu has developed smartglasses that project imagery directly onto the user’s retina with a laser (PC World)
Micromax launched its HealthYu- a fitness handheld device and YuFit- a wearable band (The Economic Times)
Funding, Crowdfunding and M&A
Pain relieving wearable, Cur, begins its fundraising campaign (PCWorld)
Rockioo smartwatch aimed at fitness enthusiasts launched its Kickstarter campaign (Ubergizmo)
Phree stylus aimed at providing a better means to interact in virtual reality quickly surpassed its $100,000 goal on Kickstarter this week (Re/Code)
Major Milestones
Amazon launches wearable store in Canada (MobileSyrup)
Researchers have successfully found a way to embed flexible graphene electrodes into clothing (BGR India)
Discovery announced that it is filming its popular show Mythbusters and several other programs in virtual reality (Engadget)
Ubisoft will release virtual reality games in 2016 (Engadget)
Google Fit update brings a dedicated watchface for Android Wear (Trusted Reviews)
Google launched its first Apple Watch app, News & Weather (Time)
Researchers have developed an advanced, flexible display cell called a quantum dot light emitting diode (QLED) for the first time in the world (Korea Times)
Rovio demos Angry Birds in VR (Ubergizmo)
Thalmic Labs launched Myo for Presentations (MobileSyrup)
Rumours
Samsung’s newest smartwatch, Gear A, is said to be delayed and will now launch at IFA 2015 (Fonearena)
ASUS to Release ZenWatch 2 During Q3 2015 (MobileSyrup)
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