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
VR is killing the video star: Lots of movement in the VR & media space this week. The Weeknd & Eminem’s “The Hills” music video was released in VR. Hunger Games fans can stand next to the Mockingjay in a Katniss VR experience. Tommy Hilfiger launched in-store virtual reality devices which are the first to be permanent fixtures in the store. MTV EMA’s will be live streamed in VR. Select AMC Theatres are getting hooked up with an HTC Vive set-up for a Paranormal Activity experience. And the biggest push came from the New York Times, which announced it will be shipping out Google Cardboard to over a million print subscribers in early November.
One MAGICAL leap: Stealthy startup, Magic Leap, released a clip of its mixed reality technology in action on YouTube and its out of this world. The video specifically calls out that there is no movie magic involved as it shows digital robots and solar system renderings co-existing in the real world.
Statistics & Forecasts
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo forecasts 3.5 to 4 million Apple Watch shipments during Q1 2016 of the fiscal year (MacRumors)
2018 value of the global wearable technology market is expected to be US$5.8 billion, a jump of close to 800% on its 2012 value, according to TMR Research (Global Newswire)
Enterprise Wearables Market to Grow to over $6 Billion by 2020, says Tractica (Datamation)
Device Announcements
Vuzix begins shipping iWear video headphones (PR Newswire)
VersaMe launches Starling, a wearable that counts the words spoken to your child to help their language development (PR Newswire)
Polar launches new fitness tracker A360 with heart rate monitoring (Android Central)
Fossil reveals its line of Android Wear smartwatches (MobileSyrup)
Misfit launches new Shine 2 fitness tracker (MobileSyrup)
Funding, Crowdfunding & M&A
Surgical Theater raised $9 million in a Series A to back its virtual reality and image guidance software that offers a 3-D view of brain surgery (Fierce Medical Devices)
Kinetic wearable charging battery AMPY closed an $875,000 seed round led by Clean Energy Trust and NewGen Ventures (TechCrunch)
Google invests in Chinese Android Wear partner Mobvoi for an undisclosed amount (TechCrunch)
Optinvent kick off a crowdfunding campaign for its ORA-X Smart AR headphones (Slashgear)
Major Milestones
Apple Releases watchOS 2.0.1 (MobileSyrup)
Pebble metal bands now shipping within 6-8 weeks (Slashgear)
LinkedIn Pulse Apple Watch app launched (AppAdvice)
RunKeeper app gets Apple Watch support (TechCrunch)
Adidas updates its Fit Smart app to allow users to track daily and weekly fitness activity (Engadget)
LG & Samsung unveil new batteries for wearables (Android Authority)
Rumours
ASUS said to be getting into the augmented reality headset game (CNET)
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