W|W: The Wearable Weekly – Shazam joins the AR race

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

VCs invested a total of $1.07 billion in AR companies in 2016, which is over four times the total investments in 2015 (UploadVR)

Virtual reality porn data suggests Gear VR 13 times more popular than Google Daydream (Variety)

Viveport is seeing 100,000 unique active users each week, according to HTC (UploadVR)

Device announcements

Microsoft unveils specs of Project Scorpio (UploadVR)

ZTE announces affordable ZTE Quartz Android Wear 2.0 watch (MobileSyrup)

ODG unveils enterprise-focused AR smart glasses (TechCrunch)

Polar announced its flagship running watch, the M400 (The Verge)

Funding & M&A

AMD acquires VR wireless chip maker Nitero (Forbes)

Major milestones

Toronto’s Globacore launches Lemmings on HoloLens (Next Reality)

Pebble update will extend the life of its smartwatches (MobileSyrup)

Neurable plans to bring brainwave controls to AR headsets later this year (Next Reality)

Smurfs launches on HoloLens (Mashable)

Google adds SoundStage developer Logan Olson to its VR team (TechCrunch)

Lifeliqe pilots HoloLens education app (VentureBeat)

Shazam nabs a new CTO to help it break into augmented reality (Business Insider)

Rumours

Apple drops hint for VR-Ready Mac Pro (UploadVR)

Patent suggests Oculus is looking at new types of hand controllers (UploadVR)

Sony bringing PSVR to arcades (Polygon)

Apple Watch Series 3 expected to ship in second half of 2017 (Fortune)

Rumor: iPhone 8 could feature VR/AR accessories (9to5 Mac)

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!