Epson said it began shipping the Runsense SF-110 GPS watch ($139) designed for runners and hikers who want to track workouts and monitor daily activities. The fitness wearable measures steps, calories burned, distance, pace, time, laps and altitude, said the company. Users can set three customizable screens with up to nine real-time measurements, it said in a Tuesday news release. Runsense SF-110 users can sync their data with the Epson Run Connect app available for Android and iOS devices or with MapMyRun and Strava apps. Users can also enable Assisted GPS through Run Connect to download GPS satellite data directly to the watch for a faster initial GPS connection, Epson said.
Fitbit released a Windows 10 app redesigned with more information and new notification types. New features include quick actions for tracking health and fitness activities including food/water intake and exercise, said Fitbit. The company added Cortana personal assistant support, enabling users to log food intake and activity information by voice. Windows 10 users also can set alarms more efficiently with a button click to encourage more frequent logging, said Fitbit.
Many wearable and mobile health app users don’t feel their data is sufficiently secured by manufacturers, according to a survey by Healthline, a health information and technology provider, a news release said. The survey, which polled 3,679 Healthline.com readers June 17-24, found 25 percent of respondents don’t believe their personal health data is secure on a Fitbit or a health tracking app, the release said. About half of respondents, 45 percent, said they were concerned hackers may try to steal their personal health data from their wearable, it said. Lingering and noticeable concerns about protection of personal health information “should be a warning bell for manufacturers to ensure that the security of this new technology is a top priority,” said Healthline CEO Dean Stephens. The survey also found that despite security concerns, consumers “want the health and fitness support that wearable devices provide,” the release said. The average consumer uses two to four health or fitness apps, with 43 percent of respondents saying they stop using an app within six months of using it, the release said.
Digital payments via wearables will grow from $3.1 billion this year to $501.1 billion worldwide by 2020 and will be roughly 20 percent of mobile proximity transaction volume by that time, a Tractica report said. Wearables-driven transactions will be roughly 1 percent of all cashless retail transactions by 2020, it said. Enabling technologies include NFC (near field communications), radio frequency identification (RFID), quick response (QR) codes and bar codes. “Wearable payments are just getting started,” analyst Aditya Kaul said. Apple Pay for Apple Watch is the first big effort at enabling payments with the wrist, Kaul said, saying Android Pay and Samsung Pay will soon support smart watch payments. Early market trials and deployments include Barclays’ bPay system in the U.K., Swatch’s partnership with UnionPay, Alipay’s partnership with Xiaomi in China and Disney’s “successful deployment” of its MagicBand closed-loop payment and ticketing system at its theme parks, Kaul said.
NASA is working on microchips for wearable devices that reflect wireless signals instead of using transmitters and receivers, reducing the amount of power required before recharging. The technology, developed by Adrian Tang, strategic technology researcher-NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and Frank Chang, engineering professor, University of California-Los Angeles, transmits information up to three times faster than standard Wi-Fi, said NASA. "The idea is if the wearable device only needs to reflect the Wi-Fi signal from a router or cell tower, instead of generate it, the power consumption can go way down (and the battery life can go way up)," Tang said in the release. Chang and Tang devised a simple switch mechanism that uses little power and allows the fast transfer of information between a wearable device and a computer, smart phone or tablet. They overcame the challenge of other objects in a room that reflect signals by developing a wireless chip that constantly senses and suppresses background reflections, enabling the wearable’s chip to differentiate between the real Wi-Fi signal and the reflection from the background. In testing, the system achieved a data transfer rate of 330 Mbps at about 8 feet, tripling that of the current Wi-Fi rate, they said, while using about 1,000 times less power than a Wi-Fi link. "You can send a video in a couple of seconds, but you don't consume the energy of the wearable device,” said Chang. Applications for the technology include medicine where wearables, used to monitor vital signs such as blood pressure and heart rhythm, could detect problems early, save lives and avoid costly hospital admissions, they said.
Activity trackers and other fitness wearables aren’t just for “the 20-something triathlete or yoga instructor,” said an AARP survey report, released Tuesday, probing how such devices can be better designed for “50-plus” consumers. Older Americans “care about achieving positive health and avoiding illness and see potential in using activity and sleep trackers toward these goals,” the report said. “Yet tapping this market’s full potential requires that usability challenges -- such as discomfort and perceived inaccuracy of data syncing -- be overcome first.” AARP researchers fitted 92 tech-savvy consumers with seven models of “off-the-shelf” activity trackers for six weeks and monitored their likes and dislikes about the devices. Of those participating in the study, 47 percent “reported increased motivation for healthier living, and 46 percent reported actually being more active, sleeping better or eating more healthfully,” the report said. However, many discontinued using the devices before the end of the six-week study period because they “perceived inaccuracies” in the data the devices were reporting, they found the devices uncomfortable, and syncing the devices was a common frustration, it said. It recommended improving activity trackers for 50-plus consumers by making them “simpler to set up” and “unobtrusive to wear and maintain” while building more “robust syncing capabilities” into the devices.
Smartwatches are primed to be a hot holiday item, according to Parks Associates, which said Thursday that more than 40 percent of smartwatches sold are gifts. Some 9 percent of U.S. broadband households plan to buy a smartwatch by the end of the year, up from 8 percent last year, it said. "Consumers expect the smartwatch to be part of the mobile and connected home ecosystem,” analyst Harry Wang said. Among smartwatch owners and those planning to buy one, 42 percent said they would buy a smartwatch only if it works with apps from multiple companies, Wang said. In 2014, Best Buy and Amazon.com were the leading retailers for smartwatches, with 44 percent of the market, but Walmart's market share jump from 2 percent in 2013 to 7 percent last year indicates consumers will gravitate to familiar sales channels for electronics, Wang said. That makes Apple's entry into the market “even more potent” as it provides a “much-needed impetus” to smartwatch adoption, he said. "Traditional and luxury smartwatch manufacturers have been playing a waiting game to gauge consumer interest and reactions to the smartwatch,” Wang said. Apple's entry introduces “some urgency as the traditional and luxury watch manufacturers do not want to fall too far behind when introducing new products,” he said.
Pizza chain Domino's launched an app for Apple Watch that allows customers to track their orders. With the Domino’s Tracker, users can monitor orders from when they’re taken, when placed in the oven and ready for takeout or delivery, said the company. From the watch face, consumers can swipe up to access shortcuts to the apps users view most frequently, it said.
Intersil, a supplier of power management components, introduced the ISL9120, a buck-boost switching regulator that enables more energy-efficient operation of wearables and other small-footprint IoT devices, the company said in a Monday announcement. “With the pervasiveness of mobile devices and growing popularity of wearables, power designers are challenged to balance cost, form factor and power efficiency,” the company said. Power for wearables typically requires three DC-DC regulators and 3-5 low-dropout (LDO) regulators, it said. But LDOs take up “valuable board space” and “lack the high efficiency and reliability of a buck-boost regulator, sacrificing performance,” such as memory resets, application shutdowns and other glitches, it said. Using the ISL9120 instead eliminates these problems, it said. And since the ISL9120 requires only a single inductor and comes in a small 1.41mm x 1.41mm package, “designers no longer have to compromise efficiency or form factor,” it said.
“The goal of any trade show is to present a quality experience for all participants,” promoters of the Wearable Tech Expo emailed us Friday, explaining why they pulled the July 13-15 event from the Javits Convention Center in New York, to hold it instead in conjunction with the IoT Evolution Expo Aug. 17-20 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas (see 1506240035). Combining the two shows in one venue “creates a more robust opportunity for networking” among the “various factions” of wearable technology, including those involved in the “exploding market” for IoT devices and services, they said. “There have been many requests from the Wearable tech community to bring the show closer to the West coast where so much of the industry is located.” Promoters had sidestepped our questions why they pulled the event from Javits less than three weeks before it was to open.