W|W: The Wearable Weekly – The $643 million question

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

IDC predicts revenue from AR/VR will surge to $162 billion by 2020 from an estimated $5.2 billion in 2016 (MarketWatch)

Nearly 90% of Deloitte survey respondents are using some form of virtual or augmented reality in their business (TechRepublic)

Study says Canadians will spend $643 million on virtual and augmented reality by 2017 (MobileSyrup)

Device Announcements

Intel announces Project Alloy, an all-in-one VR headset (Engadget)

Samsung’s latest Gear VR is made available along with Note 7 (Oculus)

Funding & M&A

InsiteVR grabs $1.5M in seed funding to bring 3D models to life in VR (TechCrunch)

Bloomlife Raises $4M in Seed Funding (PR Newswire)

Major Milestones

Recon Jet demos Pokemon Go on smart glasses (Android Headlines)

USA Basketball Partnering With Samsung To Create VR Content (Android Headlines)

Vuzix iWear Takes Leap Forward with the Addition of SteamVR to its Supported Game Ecosystem (Sys-Con)

Augmented reality firm CastAR recruits former LucasArts chief Darrell Rodriguez as its CEO (VentureBeat)

McDonald’s launches and then subsequently pulls Step Tracker in Happy Meals (MobileSyrup)

Rumours

Job posting hints at Amazon gearing up to create its own VR and AR content (Variety)

Apple nixed cellular connectivity on the Apple Watch due to battery (Bloomberg)

Apple patent points to advancements in AR display technology (Patently Apple)

Fitbit’s new Charge 2 and Flex 2 wearables leak (MobileSyrup)

  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!