W|W: The Wearable Weekly – Nike and Apple

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!

Industry Highlights

Nike and Apple settled a class action suit which questioned the FuelBand fitness tracker’s measuring capability to count steps, calories and Fuelpoints. As part of the settlement, Nike will issue $25 Nike gift cards or a cheque for $15 from the company.

Best Buy will be the first retailer outside of Apple to sell Apple Watch. Best Buy US will be stocking its shelf with the Apple smartwatch beginning August 7 followed by Best Buy Canada in August 14.

New Android Wear devices the Moto 360 2 and Samsung Orbis are expected to be announced in the next few months. Both of these watches are expected to be round and the Samsung device, which may debut at Samsung’s unpacked event this month, has been confirmed to have a rotating bezel.

Statistics & Forecasts

Virtual reality revenues could reach $21.8 billion by 2020, according to a report by Tractica (Forbes)

Virtual Reality devices to ship 43 Million units by 2020, with mobile-reliant head mounted displays foremost, says ABI Research (BusinessWire)

Brain-to-machine interface market to top US$200 million by 2020, according to ABI Research (BusinessWire)

Android Wear falls to 11 percent global smartwatch OS market share in Q2 2015, according to report by Strategy Analytics (PR Newswire)

Wearable payments to drive more than $500 billion in transaction volume annually by 2020, according to Tractica (MarketWatch)

Device Announcements

Best Buy becomes first major retailer to sell Apple Watch outside of Apple, in-store on August 7 (MSN)

South Korean startup unveils Dot, world’s first smartwatch for the visually impaired (Digital Trends)

Best Buy Canada to begin selling Apple Watch on August 14 (MobileSyrup)

Vuzix launched prescription smart safety glasses (PR Newswire)

Pebble Time now available at Best Buy Canada (MobileSyrup)

Nokia unveiled Ozo, a virtual reality camera (The Verge)

Luxury smartwatch maker Olio adds new watches to its collection including a 24K version (Engadget)

Mondaine opens pre-orders for its Mondaine Helvetica 1 Smart Watch (Forbes)

Samsung confirmed that its next smartwatch will have a rotating bezel (SamMobile)

Funding, Crowdfunding, and M&A

Virtual reality software company AltspaceVR raised $10 million in venture funding (Forbes)

Smartwatch company Olio raised $10 million in Series A (TechCrunch)

eSight, a company helping the visually impaired see with its smart glasses, will go public in a RTO (BetaKit)

Major Milestones

Vikings to implement virtual reality technology (Vikings)

YouTube launched its very first 360-degree ad (Business Insider)

NASA researchers create Wi-Fi-powered chip tech for wearables to improve battery life (FierceWirelessTech)

Oculus debuted its first short film for VR, Henry (USA Today)

Rumours

Moto 360 2 expected to debut at IFA in September (Forbes)

Moto 360 2 rumored to be going through wireless testing with the FCC (NDTV Gadgets)

Samsung expected to debut “Orbis” smartwatch at its Unpacked event in August (Android Headlines)

New patent suggests Samsung is looking at watch faces that move to track your face (Gizmodo)