Vuzix announced a three-year supply agreement with Toshiba, valued at $5 million, for smart glasses co-branded as Toshiba, powered by Vuzix. Toshiba plans to sell the glasses globally, bundled with a “mobile edge computing system” designed for the project, Vuzix said. Production is to begin in February.
Fitbit announced its first operating system update for the Ionic smartwatch, including new apps and 100 clock faces, and it launched Fitbit Labs, a research initiative intended to drive behavior change. The wearables maker also said it’s partnering with Deezer to bring the music service to users worldwide in Q1, enabling users to listen to music without a phone. Some 60 apps are available for the Fitbit OS, it said, including Yelp; Clue, a female health app that tracks menstrual cycles; a golf app that provides precise distance to the green; a surfing app that tracks swells and conditions; Nest and Hue Lights for wrist control of a home’s temperature and lights; TripAdvisor; and United Airlines. Apps are due in January from British Airways, Lyft and Walgreens, it said.
Smart glasses supplier Vuzix announced a preorder program for its upcoming Vuzix Blade augmented reality smart glasses developer kit. The company highlighted the compact size of the glasses, in a Friday announcement, comparing them to conventional sunglasses. The Blade is an example of where AR “is going to be,” delivered in a form factor “that people will not be embarrassed to wear in public.” The Blade weighs under 3 ounces, including camera, CPU, sensors and batteries, said the company. The $1,997 kit includes a pre-production set of smart glasses and an upgrade to production hardware when it’s available commercially, said Vuzix. Kits are expected to ship early next year.
Fitbit is supplying 10,000 Charge 2 and Alta HR devices as part of a funding award from the National Institutes of Health to Scripps Research Institute, it said Tuesday. The All of Us program is looking to enroll more than a million participants in research designed to help prevent and treat disease based on individual characteristics, Fitbit said. Data gathered from the program will help researchers understand how differences in lifestyle, environment and biological makeup influence health and disease, it said. The Fitbit devices, provided to a representative sample of study volunteers for a year, will provide data on activity, heart rate and sleep, it said.
TomTom’s Q3 sports wearables business plummeted 29 percent and remains “under review,” said the company in a Q3 financial news release Friday. Revenue in the consumer sports segment -- comprising fitness trackers; golf, running and outdoor watches; and an action cam -- fell to roughly $115 million from the year-ago quarter, it said. The company announced last month it was reorganizing its consumer sports business to focus on location, software and services for business customers. It planned to eliminate 136 “redundant” jobs, it said. TomTom had a $6.2 million Q3 loss as overall revenue fell 9 percent from the year-ago quarter to roughly $257 million, it said. The company expanded its traffic service to 68 countries and launched the TomTom EV Service, providing real-time availability of electric vehicle charging stations.
BioSensics introduced a motion-detecting sensor that can turn everyday objects into a smart device. The small, square CliQ sensor, $34 on Kickstarter, sets in motion functions via four actions: click, double click, brief motion and sustained motion, said the company. Users design “blueprints” with the CliQ app to control how and when the devices can be activated and what action or alert they generate. Simple examples include dimming lights, turning on music, and shuffling a playlist, said the company, but the device also could trigger an online dinner order when a user walks through the front door.
Fitbit will release the software developer kit (SDK) for its Ionic health and fitness smartwatch platform Tuesday, it said in an announcement. The Ionic ($299) and the Fitbit Flyer ($129) wireless headphones will be in stores Sunday, the company said. Fitbit launched the smartwatch last month (see 1708280034) with features including enhanced heart-rate tracking, on-device guided workouts, on-board music for up to 300 songs, Fitbit’s App Gallery and contactless payments. Battery life is given as five days, and the watch is compatible with Android, Apple and Windows operating systems. The preview Fitbit SDK includes Fitbit OS developer beta firmware, the Fitbit Studio development environment and resources developers need to quickly build and share apps and clock faces, said the company. Apps from Pandora, Starbucks, Strava and AccuWeather will be available at launch, it said.
Revenue in the global wrist-worn wearable market will advance at a 13 percent compound annual growth rate through 2021 to $38 billion, a Thursday Technavio report said. Integration of wearables for sports and fitness use with smartphones will allow manufacturers to offer “highly sophisticated analyses” aided by technologically advanced apps, it said. The opportunities created a market for startups that allow developers to access devices and enhance functionality, analyst Ujjwal Doshi said: Most of the wrist wearables “serve a single purpose or a specific set of related functions for a user.”
Most innovation in wearables through 2021 will take place on the wrist, said IDC analyst Ramon Llamas in a Thursday report, but clothing and earwear will experience the fastest growth rates. Vendors are on track to ship 121.7 million wearables this year, up 16.6 percent from 2016, extending to 229.5 million in 2021, IDC said. The wrist is the “ideal location” for users to interact with data and apps, and varieties of style and features will keep wrist-worn devices “well out in front of the market,” said Llamas. Ear-worn wearables with integrated personal assistants, and clothing that communicates vital signs to a doctor, have many possible use cases but will ship in small volumes and come in under 5 percent in market share, he said. Professional teams and athletes will drive the clothing-based wearables market, with embedded sensors that track fitness performance and fatigue, but general consumer interest will lag because many of the features already are found in other wearables, IDC said. Cellular connectivity, improved sensors and better algorithms will improve devices’ accuracy and make it possible for companies to sell wearables through new channels and to new customers, said analyst Jitesh Ubrani. Earware, excluding Bluetooth headsets, will have single-digit market share through the forecast period, but will produce the fastest growth in the category, climbing from 1.8 million shipments this year to 10.5 million in 2021. Conventional music playback is a common thread across all earwear, with fitness tracking and coaching, real-time language translation and audio modulation through connected earwear on the horizon. Watches, currently 55 percent of the wearables market, will rise to 67 percent share in 2021, while wrist-based trackers drop from 39 percent share this year to 22 percent in 2021, it said. Smartwatches running third-party applications and basic watches that don't run third-party apps will comprise the majority of wearable devices throughout the forecast, said IDC, with Apple and Android Wear leading the market. Fitbit's Java-based operating system and Garmin's Connect IQ also will make strides, it said.
More sophisticated features drove the wearables market in Q2 as worldwide shipments jumped 10.3 percent vs. the year-ago quarter, said an IDC report. The quarter marked a turning point as sales of basic models that don’t run third-party apps declined for the first time while smartwatch shipments surged 61 percent, said IDC. What were once niche features -- GPS and health tracking – are now standard in smartwatches, said analyst Jitesh Ubrani, saying GPS, in just a quarter of all wearables a year ago, was a feature in 42 percent of smartwatches in Q2. Algorithms that track workouts and give health insights are equally important to device features, Ubrani said, which could keep Apple and Fitbit atop the U.S. market “as their investments in the tracking and perhaps diagnosing of diseases will be a clear differentiator from low-cost rivals." For Q2, Xiaomi led the global wearables market with 3.5 million shipments, followed by Apple and Fitbit, both with 3.4 million shipments and share of 13 and 12.9 percent. Garmin finished the quarter with 1.4 million shipments for 5.4 percent, followed by Fossil with 1 million shipped and 4 percent share, it said.