W|W: The Wearable Weekly – The age of AR

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.

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Statistics & Forecasts

Mobile AR to top a billion users and $60 billion by 2021 (Digi-Capital)

In 2017, 40 million people in the US will engage with some form of augmented reality at least monthly, up 30.2 percent over last year (eMarketer)

Fitness trackers getting better at tracking heart rate but terrible at counting calories says Stanford Study (CNBC)

Device announcements

Threye to demo low-cost “AR cardboard” HeadsUpAR at AWE (Next Reality)

Ringly launches smart bracelet (The Verge)

ASUS’ ZenFone AR is coming this summer (9to5 Google)

Microsoft research shows off AR glasses (Mashable)

Funding & M&A

Unity raises $400 million from private equity firm Silver Lake (TechCrunch)

Nymi raises $20 million Series B (BetaKit)

Aira raises $12 million Series B (PR Newswire)

Major milestones

Nike launches Apple Watch bands that match shoes (The Verge)

Air New Zealand trailing use of HoloLens (Digital Trends)

MLB to launch VR-enhanced broadcasts (Variety)

Google debuts positional tracking “WorldSense” tech and announces new Daydream partners (Fast Company)

YouTube VR will have shared rooms and voice chat (The Verge)

Google expands Google expeditions with Tango AR (CNET)

Google debuts computer vision tech Google Lens (TechCrunch)

Google’s Seurat aims to bring ‘desktop-level graphics’ to mobile VR (UploadVR)

Google Tango bringing AR indoor navigation to 400 Lowe’s stores (CNET)

Transformers VR experience centres to open in China this summer (Variety)

Samsung debuts stretchable display (Daily Mail)

New ‘Alien’ multiplayer free-roaming VR experience in development by Fox (Road to VR)

Chrome is coming to augmented reality and Google Daydream (TechCrunch)

Rumours

Beddit acquisition may hint at upcoming sleep tracking on Apple Watch 3 (Apple Insider)

Samsung to introduce “kids mode” on Gear VR (Digital Trends)

Report: Tim Cook testing wearable blood sugar tracker on Apple’s campus, connected to Apple Watch (9to5 Mac)