This Week in Wearables: Which Next Step for Wearables is the Right One

It’s confirmed: Wearables are the ‘next big thing’

via CNBC, by Nyshka Chandran

Wearables will become the world’s best-selling consumer electronics product after smartphones, according to new forecasts by market research firm Euromonitor. Sales of autonomous wearables, or smart wearables, are projected to exceed 305 million units in 2020, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 55 percent during the next five years, Euromonitor said in a new report.

Finding Your Place With Wearable Tech

via Business2Community, by Mary Long

It’s no longer enough to keep your cutting-edge technology on your desk — or even in your pocket — now you have to incorporate it into your wardrobe. Wearables are where tech is headed and the hype is tremendous – and deserved. And top tech companies are getting ready to assimilate. Are you? The power of the smartphone is coming out of your pocket and the data it once provided is everywhere you look. Or, as Bill Wasic puts it, “A new generation of wearable tech is coming – and it will transform the way you experience the world.”

Walgreens wants to use wearables to give instant discounts for exercising

via ComputerWorld, by Evan Schuman

Mobile health data is one of those yin-yang concepts, where the potential to help consumers vastly outdistances other mobile efforts, but the potential to hurt them with devastating privacy losses is dangerous. Not only is the same true in retail healthcare — think Walgreens,Rite-Aid, CVS and the pharmacies within Walmart, Target and Kroger — but it can be even more pronounced. It’s therefore only fair to give top-level kudos to Walgreens, which is bravely pushing the envelope, including one effort to give shoppers wearable devices that report health data — how much exercise is happening, at what level, what foods are being purchased, etc. — back to Walgreens. In exchange, Walgreens is preparing to issue automatic credits when customers check out.

Smartwatches, Activity Trackers Driving Wearables Beyond Healthcare

via InformationWeek Healthcare, by Larry Loeb

Nearly every industry in the US, from manufacturing, to energy, to telecoms, is looking to invest more and more in wearable technologies, such as smartwatches and other sensor-based devices. This in turn is creating a larger market for wearable devices beyond novel uses in healthcare, such as personal fitness. Those are some of the finding in a new study by APX Labs, which has been making software for wearable devices for the last five years, and Zogby Analytics. The study, “The State of Enterprise Wearables,” focused on large industrial companies in the US, in such sectors as manufacturing, telecom, utilities, energy, and the like, to understand their wearable device intentions.

Boston-based company to sell next-generation wristband to athletes

via ESPN, by Darren Rovell

Should a player sit out of a game because he might get hurt? Should a team travel immediately after it plays a game? A new company is hoping to take predictive analytics to sports medicine and, in turn, revolutionize how teams and players themselves think about athletes’ bodies and their recovery. On Tuesday, Boston-based WHOOP will announce the availability of a product it has been building for more than three years: a next-generation wearable wristband, similar to Jawbone and Fitbit, that takes more complex measurements like skin conductivity and heart-rate variability to analyze the stress an athlete puts on his or her body and how that athlete’s body recovers