Smartwatches, Fitness Trackers Expected to Boom in 2016

Just as for virtual reality, 2016 is expected to be a pivotal year for wearable technology, particularly smartwatches and fitness trackers.

Statistical data puts global sales of fitness trackers and smartwatches at 51 million units for 2015 and forecasts that this figure will jump to 84 million -- 38 million fitness trackers and 46 million smartwatches -- by the end of 2016.

This is in part due to the Apple Watch, which has now been on sale for a year. It has made smartwatches more visible and more desirable, yet the impact hasn't been as big as many were expecting.

Mixed response

"The demand for wearable technology has grown rapidly, but early consumer signals have been mixed," said Lauren Guenveur, mobile analyst for Kantar Worldpanel.

No smartwatch really has a clear use case or killer application other than forwarding smartphone alerts.

Clarity of use is why fitness trackers have become so popular. And it's also why companies like Microsoft have been packing more and more features into their smartbands to increase potential appeal while continuing to focus on fitness.

"Fitbit started off with a bang, but will consumers remain loyal to that concept, or want more?" said Shannon Conway, consumer analyst for Kantar Worldpanel.

Targeting specific users

This problem is why other firms are moving in the opposite direction. On Tuesday, Garmin launched the Approach X40, a $249.99 fitness tracker specifically for golf. It can track heart rate and steps taken, and contains data on over 40,000 golf courses.

"[It] is the perfect all-in-one solution for golfers who want to know distances on the course and track wellness data without the hassle of switching between multiple devices," said Dan Bartel, Garmin vice-president of worldwide sales.

"Manufacturers are speculating about where the market is, where it will go, and what consumers really want," said Conway.

Early adopters and future customers

According to Global Web Index, 10 per cent of consumers around the world now wear a smartwatch with 16-24-year-olds being the most likely group to want one.

Meanwhile, the next-generation Apple Watch isn't expected until September and rumors point to integrated cellular network connectivity, meaning that it would work completely independently of a smartphone.

In the meantime, Kantar is readying its first-ever quarterly report into the state of the wearables market, and in particular, how consumers who own smartwatches feel about them. The first edition will be published on May 4.

Explained: Camera Improvements in the New HTC 10

With the HTC 10, the Taiwanese company is promising to undo the past wrongs in the cameras of its previous flagship phones. The camera has long a weak point in HTC devices. At first, HTC sacrificed image resolution in the M8 and made the size of individual pixels larger to capture more light (what HTC called Ultrapixel). But the resulting 4 megapixel images were often fuzzy, especially when cropped or enlarged. To fix the issue, in its next flagship - the M9 - HTC went with smaller individual pixels in a 20-megapixel camera last year, but it still underperformed in extreme situations, such as indoors and close-ups. In the HTC 10, the company attempts to strike a balance with larger individual pixels (1.55µm), but not as large as before and a 12 megapixel sensor in its camera coupled with a ƒ/1.8 lens. HTC accepts that in the imaging performance in the M9 was not up to the kind of spec of what they really like to see in a flagship. HTC is giving a slight boost to the selfi...

Flexible Camera Developed That Can Be Wrapped Around Objects

A team led by an Indian-origin professor at Columbia University has created a novel sheet camera that can be wrapped around everyday objects to capture images that cannot be taken with one or more conventional cameras. "Cameras today capture the world from essentially a single point in space. While the camera industry has made remarkable progress in shrinking the camera to a tiny device with ever increasing imaging quality, we are exploring a radically different approach to imaging," said Shree K Nayar, computer science professor at Columbia University. "We believe there are numerous applications for cameras that are large in format but very thin and highly flexible," added Nayar who graduated from the Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, in 1984. Nayar's team designed and fabricated a flexible lens array that adapts its optical properties when the sheet camera is bent. This optical adaptation enables the device to produce high quality images over a wide ...

Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016) Leaked in Press Images

The anticipated successor to the popular Samsung Galaxy J1, tipped to be called the Galaxy J1 (2016), has once again been leaked in images on the Web. While in the previous leaks we have seen the unannounced smartphone in its Black colour variant, the new leaked image shows the handset in two additional colour variants. The image tweeted by @evleaks on Monday shows the Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016) smartphone in Gold and White colour variants. The design of the handset also fall in line with the models leaked in images previously. It is worth mentioning that the screen bezel seen in the image stay black in all the three colour variants. The smartphone is seen featuring a physical home button, along with a multi-window, and a back capacitive button on either side. At the back, the smartphone sports a camera at the centre with a LED flash and a speaker on either sides. Samsung is yet to announce the smartphone. The Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016)leaked in images last month as well...

IntellectBeat

Search This Blog