Wearable Devices Market Insight!

Tags

technology, wearable

Wearable devices market insight

I’ve collected few stats to give a sneak preview of the wearable devices potential in the near future. please check out the below mentioned numbers carefully and assess where this technology trend is heading to;

According to new research from International Data Corporation (IDC), “Wearables took a huge step forward over the past year and shipment volumes will exceed 19 million units in 2014, more than tripling last year’s sales. From there, the global market will swell to 111.9 million units in 2018, resulting in a CAGR of 78.4%.”

“ABI research forcasts the wearable computing device market will grow to 485 million annual device shipment by 2018”

“By 2018, wearable unit shipments are forecast to reach 210 million”, (IMS Research)

The market for company-provided wearables will be larger than the consumer market within the next five years, as wearables represent the next phase of the mobile revolution (Forrester Research)

The wearable market is being viewed as the “Next big thing” within the mobile ecosystem by not just the smartphone vendors, but also app developers, content creators & advertisers. (Juniper Research)

Microsoft needs Windows 10 to dominate IoT market to challenge Apple and Google

Tags

apple, google, internet of things, IoT, operating system, windows 10

Microsoft needs Windows 10 to dominate IoT market to challenge Apple and Google

Microsoft needs Windows 10 to succeed. Its legacy desktop strength is waning after the disastrous Windows 8, it’s all but lost the mobile ecosystem battle to Android and Apple, and its own hardware launches have been mixed at best.

However, while the focus on Windows 10 will be on how it fares in Microsoft’s traditional desktop and laptop markets, there is another version of Windows 10 that Microsoft also needs to succeed: Windows 10 for the Internet of Things.

The IoT market is predicted to be worth $1.7tn by 2020, with some 38.5 billion connected devices deployed. As such, Microsoft cannot afford to miss out on this market as it did with the mobile revolution.

Richard Edwards, principal research analyst at Ovum, said that Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella is obviously aware of this.

“Microsoft was caught wrong-footed when Google harnessed the Linux kernel to produce the Android operating system that now dominates the smartphone market, but this time, with cloud-savvy Nadella at the helm, Microsoft is ready for action,” he said.

Microsoft is issuing three versions of the new OS for IoT: Windows 10 IoT for small devices, Windows 10 IoT for mobile devices, and Windows 10 IoT for industry devices.

Windows IoT

This could see Windows 10 IoT used in traditional areas where Microsoft Embedded has been used, such as kiosks, cash machines and industrial sectors like manufacturing, but also new, emerging areas as yet unknown.

Furthermore, Windows 10 IoT is free for small devices to use which should encourage developer adoption, a move not too dissimilar to how Google offers Android as a free installation to phone manufacturers.

“Microsoft continues to remind partners and device builders that Windows 10 IoT is free for small devices, and is urging manufacturers to consider the Windows operating system as they build their new, intelligent, connected devices,” said Edwards.

Efforts to encourage the use of Windows 10 IoT have even seen Microsoft cosying up to the likes of Raspberry Pi in order to get as many people as possible to use Windows 10 in their weird and wonderful experiments.

Enterprise interest
However, while hobbyists and tinkerers are one thing, Microsoft will need to garner success in the enterprise and industrial markets to derive financial success from Windows 10 IoT.

Research by Juniper found that enterprise use of IoT will be the biggest driver of the sector as businesses embrace IoT to gain more insights into everything from manufacturing processes to products in use in the field.

But report author Steffan Sorell said that the use of IoT systems will deliver true benefits only if combined with big data technologies that can make sense of the data and cloud tools that can manage the huge volumes of data being created.

“Blindly capturing data does not lead to information. This is where businesses must identify where to add connectivity, and what the analytics should aim to achieve,” he told V3.

“In most cases, this will also involve adopting a cloud computing strategy, as most businesses will not have the infrastructure in place to cope with the volumes of gathered data.”

Enter Microsoft stage left. Its Azure cloud platform offers exactly this and it has even unveiled a dedicated Azure IoT Suite that can help businesses manage the data and services coming from IoT deployments.

“The one thing that’s going to happen with this explosion of internet-connected devices is the explosion of data that will rendezvous with the cloud,” Nadella said when the product was unveiled in March.

This aspect of Microsoft’s offering is something that Edwards from Ovum describes as “critical” and shows the company becoming an innovator in this area.

“Microsoft has been building this out over the last three years or so and we’re now seeing them being packaged for market as identifiable offerings. Microsoft has not often been seen as an innovator in the past few years but with Nadella at the helm they are definitely a leader in this area,” he told V3.

So, Microsoft has the platform to help firms manage IoT deployments and now it has the operating system to run the devices themselves. So far, so good.

However, while Microsoft is moving fast in the IoT sphere, it inevitably faces stiff competition as arch-rivals Google and Apple also look to gain a slice of the action.

Apple has its iOS-based HomeKit service, while Google has its Android-based Project Brillo.

“It’s clear that all these companies are trying to establish a bridgehead into this market so they can go forward as the market grows,” added Edwards.

So, once again, Microsoft, Apple and Google are squaring up in a fight for the future. The difference this time is that Microsoft’s Azure platform and Windows 10 IoT should mean it can put up far more of a fight than it managed in the mobile wars.

by Dan Worth

29 Jul 2015

V3.co.uk

Read Full Article here …

Has wearable tech peaked?

Tags

apple, google glass, jawbone, watch, wearable

Apple CEO Tim Cook, discusses the new Apple Watch and iPhone 6s (AP)

SUMMARY

Sales data from the US is starting to indicate that Apple’s smartwatch might not quite be a hit… yet.

The latest data coming out of the US suggests sales of Apple Watch have plummeted since the launch of the smartwatch back in April.According to Slice Intelligence, tracking data from electronic receipts in the US, sales in launch week averaged around 200,000 per day before settling out at 20,000 per day.

In recent weeks, however, sales have started to dry up, with as few as 6,000 per day by the end of June and still falling.

Given the raging hype of what has been several years now, it seems fair to ask… just what is going wrong with wearables?

At that rate Apple would be set to shift just 1m devices in the second half of 2015, far below the expectations of Wall Street analysts who have predicted 7.5m to be shipped.Even allowing for a generous margin for error, the expectation of 20m units for 2016 seems increasingly challenging to achieve.

Do wearables have legs?

Earlier this year we saw Google halt sales entirely of its £1,000 Glass product, and there is anecdotal evidence of more and more Jawbones leaving their users uninspired. Gartner has predicted 1.2bn wearable devices sold by 2020. But with just 70m shipped last year, things need to get moving.

Granted, it is still early days.

The bald truth is that—like virtual reality in 80’s and Palm Pilots in the 90’s—the technology is just not ready yet.

However, given the raging hype of what has been several years now, it seems fair to ask what is going wrong with wearables.The bald truth is that, like virtual reality in 80’s and Palm Pilots in the 90’s, the technology is just not ready yet.

Selling a billion watches

It is true that the smartphone revolution has pushed the boundaries of the hardware faster than even Moore’s Law predicted.

It has paved the way for small, extremely inexpensive and power-efficient processors, and these in turn have led to some of the more outlandish predictions of growth in wearables.

Having a tiny processor and WiFi chip are necessary, but not sufficient for the development of a killer wearable. The third piece of the puzzle are the sensors that gather the data to give the wearables their features, and this is where Apple still falls short.

Bernstein, a research firm, provocatively asked what it would take for Apple to sell a billion Apple Watches. They concluded that biometric sensors of the heart, blood pressure, glucose and alcohol had the power to turn Watch from a discretionary consumer item into and ubiquitous health monitoring device.

Dumb fitness trackers… for now

The problem: many of these sensors are years away from commercial availability; some do not yet exist at all.

Without these developments, we are stuck with step-trackers and sleep monitors.

Under such turbulent conditions it isn’t surprising that there would be some red herrings along the way.

The smartphone industry in combination with social networking and cloud computing are leading a revolution in the role of technology in our lives. There are profound implications, such as the possibility of a zero waste economy.Under such turbulent conditions it is unsurprising that there would be some red herrings along the way.

As early as it is to be so bold, the portends suggest the promise of wearables is turning out to be just that.

BY CHRIS WOODCOCK JULY 9, 2015

 

4 brilliant new Google projects that will shape the future of computing

Awesome ideas!

Google’s new finger control technology is straight out of a science fiction movie

Tags

gesture recognition, google, soli, wearable

The days of swiping a finger against a glass screen might soon seem as antiquated as dialing numbers on a rotary telephone.

If Google has its way you won’t need to touch a screen at all anymore.

The company’s lab for advanced projects showed off new technology on Friday that lets users move their fingers in the air to control objects in the virtual world.

It’s called Project Soli, and it uses radar waves to detect precise finger movements or finger “micromotions.”

The result is something that looks like it’s from a science-fiction movie such as Minority Report or Her, in which characters manipulated virtual objects by gracefully moving their hands or fingers in the air.

At Google, the project is the work of the Advanced Technology and Projects lab, the company’s research lab focused on futuristic technology led by Regina Dugan (and which is separate from the Google X labs that’s developing self-driving cars and internet beaming balloons).

Google showcased an early prototype of the Soli technology on stage with impressive results. Google showed how precise, fine motor skills, such as pinching the thumb and index finger, or rubbing them together at different speeds, could be used to control all sorts of things without actually touching them.

In one demo, the founder of Google’s Project Soli, Ivan Poupyrev, kicked a virtual soccer ball by flicking at the screen. In another, he changed the hours on a clock by turning an imaginary dial with his fingers, and then changed the minutes by raising his hands further away from the screen and doing it again.

Google said that after 10 months of work it has already shrunk the technology to enable Soli into a small fingernail-sized chip. The idea is that a chip this small could be integrated into electronic devices, such as smartwatches with cramped screens not well-suited to traditional input methods like finger-swiping or styluses.

As wearable devices become more popular and as screens get smaller, it becomes tougher to click different elements, explained Google’s Dugan.

Soli technology could also play a big role in virtual reality by providing a way for people to interact with the digital objects they encounter in virtual worlds. Facebook, which acquired VR headset maker Oculus for $2 billion in 2014, has previously discussed the importance of similar advancements.

Google did not say whether it planned to make the chips itself that will provide this capability or whether it views Soli as more of a technology standard that it hopes other companies will use to build products.

Read more…

Huawei announces IoT architecture, lightweight OS

Tags

Huawei, IoT, LiteOS, operating system, smart home, wearable

• Agile IoT Solution consists of IoT gateway, Controller and LiteOS
• LiteOS to be opened to developers to allow them to build their own IoT products

Huawei announces IoT architecture, lightweight OS

CHINA tech giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd has announced the launch of its Agile Network 3.0 Architecture and introduced its Agile Internet of Things (IoT) solution.

The solution would enable enterprises to build an agile IoT infrastructure, the company said in a statement.

The Agile IoT Solution consists of three core components: Agile IoT gateway, Agile Controller and LiteOS, a lightweight IoT operating system (OS).

“Huawei believes that standardising ICT infrastructure will foster the development of Internet applications, including IoT applications,” Huawei chief strategy and marketing officer William Xu said at the Huawei Network Congress 2015 in Beijing.

Huawei predicts that by 2025, a total of 100 billion connections will be generated globally and two million new sensors will be deployed every hour.   However, our networks today cannot provide the connectivity to support this, the company said.   LiteOS is the world’s most lightweight IoT OS, it claimed. It is only 10KB in size and supports zero configuration, auto-discovery, and auto-networking.   It can be widely applied to different areas including smart homes, wearable, connected vehicles and other industries.

LiteOS helps to simplify the development of smart hardware to enhance IoT connectivity. In addition, Huawei announced that it will be opened to all developers, which would enable them to develop their own IoT products.   Huawei said it is also committed to establishing an industry application-oriented IoT ecosystem by collaborating with upstream and downstream partners to develop industry solutions.

This is part of its approach to develop and provide a Business-driven ICT Infrastructure (BDII).   “BDII requires close business collaboration and joint innovation efforts between Huawei and our partners,” said Yan Lida, president of the Huawei Enterprise Business Group.   “We have been involved in industry alliances, worked with standard organisations in the area of IoT, and established innovative research centres, open labs, and development communities to foster industry development.”

– See more at: https://www.digitalnewsasia.com/business/huawei-announces-iot-architecture-lightweight-os#sthash.BSmwbmT1.dpuf

Google wants to make its own lightweight OS for the Internet of things called Brillo

Tags

brillo, google, IoT, operating system

Google wants to make its own lightweight OS for the Internet of things called Brillo

Google is making a real time operating system for the Internet of things. And it isn’t doing it as part of Nest.

Google is making its own version of an operating system for the Internet of things called Brillo, and it’s doing so completely outside of its Nest smart home devices division that currently makes the Nest thermostat and smoke detector and Dropcam connected security cameras. The Information reported the news on Thursday, but sources who have spoken with Google GOOG -0.40% about the project have also confirmed a Google internet of things software project to Fortune. They also confirmed that while it will work with Nest, it is not part of the Nest division.

The plan is to launch the code at Google’s I/O event next week. These operating systems are designed to be very small and take up very little memory so they can run on chips that might act as the brains of a smart lock or even a connected sensor. The world of these real-time operating systems as they are called is very fragmented, with most of the ones in use today being dictated by the chip. Most chipmakers provide an RTOS, as they’re known, that works with the chip.

However, the chance to own more of the overall technology “stack” that developers will use to build their connected devices for the smart home will give Google, or any company that can make their RTOS the top choice, an advantage. The closer to the hardware you can place your software, the deeper control you can exert on features like access to memory and security. And security is going to be a big element in the Internet of things. That’s a lesson Google has likely learned from Apple.

Google is not the only one that sees a fragmented market and is jumping on the opportunity. The Information mentions the launch of Samsung’s Artik chips for the internet of things as a competitor to Google’s Brillo, but those chips actually run the Nucleus OS from Mentor Graphics, which would be the more accurate comparison. So far, Samsung has surprisingly not pushed Tizen, its operating system for the Internet of things, despite its talk of making it the de facto OS for its smart televisions. Thus, it appears that Samsung isn’t quite ready to compete with Google at the software layer when it can start at the hardware and chip level.

ARM, the chip designer, is also trying to rally the world of tiny operating systems around its ARM embed OS, which so far isn’t actually out yet for developers to play with. There are other operating systems for the Internet of things such as Contiki and many proprietary systems from chip firms.

Google’s efforts here make total sense. With the Internet of things you have a lot of developers from the mobile and web world trying to build awesome devices running into operating systems that were designed to sit between controllers and software for tire pressure sensors and microwaves. It’s like if today’s teens tried to communicate on a rotary dial phone.

Click here for original article…

Fortune.com

A good effort, but a bit odd: Windows 10 IoT Core on Raspberry Pi 2

Tags

IoT, Raspberry pi, windows 10

A good effort, but a bit odd: Windows 10 IoT Core on Raspberry Pi 2

First Look Microsoft has released a preview of Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2, the £30 ARMv7 computer board produced by the Cambridge-based Raspberry Pi Foundation.

The version of Windows 10 for the Pi (which is also available for the Intel Atom MinnowBoard Max) is called Windows IoT Core, one of three Windows 10 IoT editions. The other two are Windows 10 IoT for mobile devices (which is ARM only and similar to Windows 10 Mobile) and Windows 10 IoT for industry devices, which is Intel only and similar to Windows 10 Enterprise, tweaked to run a single locked-down application such as for a cash or vending machine.

In other words, the company has hijacked the IoT (Internet of Things) buzzword and applied it to embedded Windows. That said, the old Windows CE apparently lives on for those who need it, since unlike other versions of Windows it is a real-time operating system (RTOS).

Windows 10 IoT Core is an oddity in that while it does have a GUI stack, it is limited to Microsoft’s Universal App Platform (UAP), though note that this includes DirectX as well as XAML (Microsoft’s presentation language for UAP) and HTML.

This means that there is no Windows desktop, nor even a command prompt. That said, it does support PowerShell remoting, which gets you a remote PowerShell terminal from which you can run familiar Windows commands.

Please click here for full article…

The Register

21 May 2015 at 09:57, Tim Anderson

First Batch Of Apple-Certified Smart Home Devices Will Launch Next Month Under HomeKit Program

Tags

apple, homekit, ios, IoT

First Batch Of Apple-Certified Smart Home Devices Will Launch Next Month Under HomeKit Program

HomeKit, Apple’s protocol for hooking up smart home gadgets in iOS, has been a long time coming. It was first announced at Apple’s June 2014 developers conference, but we haven’t heard much else since then. In a rare statement on the program, Apple said we’ll start to see the first HomeKit-certified devices out on the market next month. “HomeKit has been available for just a few months and we already have dozens of partners who have committed to bringing HomeKit accessories to market and we’re looking forward to the first ones coming next month,” Apple said in a statement provided to Forbes.

Apple is countering a story from Fortune this morning that reported the official launch of HomeKit was getting pushed back to the August or September timeframe instead of the expected May or June. Based on anonymous sources, the Fortune story said that Apple has been encountering a number of issues and that the HomeKit code has been taking up too much memory on the small devices.

The HomeKit protocol has been embedded in the iOS software since the iOS 8 launch last year, but there haven’t been any smart home devices for consumers to use with their Apple devices. While there hasn’t been any HomeKit-certified devices released yet, a number of device makers have announced their efforts on working through certification, which is run under Apple’s MFi (“Made for iPhone/iPod/iPad”) program. Apple has started granting HomeKit certification to behind-the-scenes players like chipmaker Broadcom, which will provide Apple-certified chips for working on devices for the HomeKit ecosystem. Broadcom received certification for its hardware development platform using its Bluetooth-Wifi combo chips that device makers can use to build a HomeKit-compatible device. But once device makers build all their hardware on Broadcom’s development kit, they will still have submit their gadgets to Apple’s MFi program for quality assurance.

Apple’s HomeKit protocol determines how devices are identified in iOS based on clearly defined device categories and what sorts of actions can be taken with them — turning on or off a light, for example. Ideally, this will allow the interactions between devices to be more consistent and reliable than with previous wireless protocols in home automation technology like ZigBee and Z-Wave. HomeKit also uses end-to-end encryption for securely connecting smart home gadgets and an Apple device.

Please click here for full article…

—
By: Aaron Tilley, Forbes

IT Pro Panel: How the IoT will change your business

Our panel of experts discusses the pros and cons of the Internet of Things

There’s no point putting your head in the sand – the Internet of Things (IoT) is coming, and it’s got the potential to completely transform the way you work.

The IoT describes a phenomenon in which everyday devices can send and receive data over the internet, and potentially between one another, too.

Everything from your kettle to aircraft parts could – and probably will – become connected, with the burgeoning industry set to grow as broadband quality and coverage improves.

In fact, analyst firm Gartner predicts there will be 25 billion connected devices by 2020 – more than three for every person on the planet.

In 2015 alone, it puts the number of connected machines at 4.9 billion come the end of the year.

So what does this mean for your business?

Our panel of experts are here to discuss the opportunities and challenges you face in our first IT Pro Panel feature.

Read more>>

WRITTEN by : Joe Curtis (24 April, 2015)

Wocket wants to replace your wallet

Smart Wallet

No one wants their credit or debit cards, or even their NFC-enabled smartphone falling into the wrong hands. While there are already various security measures in development, NXT-ID’s Wocket is one of the latest. Described as a “smart wallet,” it’s designed to securely store electronic versions of your various cards, plus it features a swipe-able physical card that can be programmed for single uses.

The Wocket is claimed to be “smaller than a typical wallet,” and can also be used to carry cash via an added accessory. Power is supplied by a coin cell battery.

Users start by swiping all of their stripe cards into the Wocket, which records the pertinent data and stores it in its onboard memory. Other types of cards, such as those utilizing barcodes, can be scanned in. Up to 10,000 cards can be stored on one device, then squirreled away someplace safe in the user’s home.

When a payment is being made, the Wocket’s touchscreen is used to select the desired “soft” (electronic) card. Before it can be accessed, however, the user has to verify their identity. This is done using a combination of biometrics and a PIN. The device then wirelessly pairs directly with the merchant’s payment system, as long as it’s authenticated by the Wocket. No smartphone or internet access is required.

For loyalty cards or others that utilize a barcode, that code will appear on the Wocket’s screen when the card is selected, allowing it to be scanned. Users can also manually enter and store textual information such as door lock passcodes, accessing it just as they would access one of their cards.

NXT-ID plans on launching the Wocket on May 28th, by which time pricing and availability information should be available. If you’re interested, you can register for updates via the link below. You might also want to check out the similar Coin device.

Source: http://www.gizmag.com/wocket-smart-wallet/31477/