Hasta La Gadget!

HTC is working on three wearables which it’s planning to preview privately to carriers at next week’s Mobile World Congress tradeshow in Barcelona, according to a report in Bloomberg.

The three devices are said to consist of two smartwatches, one focusing on Google Now’s cards based recommendations feature, and another device based on Qualcomm’s Toq smartwatch, which was really just a hardware showcase for OEMs. (The Toq link tallies with a January report by ReadWrite’s Dan Rowinski that reported HTC had licensed Qualcomm’s Toq hardware and designs.)

The third wearable HTC is working on is apparently an “electronic bracelet that plays music”.  Teenagers on buses are going to get considerably more irritating if the latter device becomes a successful commercial reality.

The news agency said the device details come from “a person with direct knowledge of the plans” — and that person also told it HTC has not decided if it will publicly demo any of these wearables next week, or simply allow carriers to have a sniff.

HTC declined to comment on the report when contacted by TechCrunch.

The mobile maker has been fighting sliding marketshare in the smartphone space for more than a year — so it’s likely viewing the rise of wearables, and the opportunity a nascent device space provides, as a potential lifeline for its business, over and above its stated aim of making more affordably priced phone slabs, targeting the $150 to $300 price range.

Earlier this month chairman, Cher Wang, told Bloomberg HTC would release its first wearable device by Christmas, although she did not provide details on exactly what form the device would take — so today’s report puts some more meat on those bones.

She did say HTC has spent ”years” on wearable development and tackling technical challenges such as ensuring a smartwatch has long enough battery life to be useful.

“Many years ago we started looking at smartwatches and wearables, but we believe that we really have to solve the battery problems and the LCD light problems,” she told the news agency. “These are customer-centric problems.”

These latest wearable hints follow some leaks around HTC’s forthcoming new smartphones. Yesterday a leaked image of an update to HTC’s flagship One was tweeted by the @evleaks Twitter account — sporting a new gold colourway (with silver and grey named as the other colour options for the flagship), and with camera enhancements apparently on board.

@evleaks has since tweeted an image of the charcoal grey version of the handset — along with specs for what sounds like a more mid-range forthcoming HTC smartphone, painted in a range of brighter colours:

HTC A5: MSM8928 (1.6GHz x4), 5.5" 720p SuperLCD2, 1.5GB/8GB (+microSD), 13MP/5MP, Sense 6.0, BoomSound, black/white/red/yellow/purple.—
@evleaks (@evleaks) February 20, 2014

Wearable technology has quickly gained traction over the past couple years, and consumers now have access to a variety of wristband-based items: smartwatches and fitness trackers being the most notable. … Continue reading

You might think you need a watch that can check email, control your music, and even stay on top of Twitter updates, but you’ve been misled. ThinkGeek’s new Classic Arcade Wristwatch is all you really need strapped to your wrist, especially if you’re old enough to remember a time when beating a video game required a pocket full of quarters.

Read more…

Wearables are so hot right now. Apple iWatch rumours are in rude health. Google is apparently looking (beyond Glass) at picking up and strapping onto its business another startup in the wearables space (guesses for which in the comments pls).

Jawbone, maker of the UP fitness tracker bangle (and apparently not the company in Google’s Glassy sights), is running sweat-free towards an IPO. Action camera maker GoPro — ok, not technically a wearables company but the point of its cameras are that they are, y’know, wearable — has already filed for one. Smartwatch maker Pebble has raised a tonne of money since 2012, first via Kickstarter and then, off the back of its snowballing crowdfunder, from VC checkbooks.

Even though the genuine usefulness of bits of technology that you strap to your person still has a lot of proving to do – vs the intrusion (both visual, with a lot of these early devices being best described as uuuuuuuugggglllyyy; and, more importantly, the sensitive personal data being captured and monetized) – it’s the big huge lucrative potential that’s exciting makers and investors.

Mature Western markets are saturated with smartphones — ergo step forward sensor-stuffed wearables as the next growth engine for device makers. Devices whose literal positioning on our bodies enables them to gather far more intimate data on the lives and (physical) habits of users than previous generations of consumer mobiles. If only we can be persuaded to wear this stuff.

Yesterday analyst Canalys suggested 2014 will be the year for the wearables category becomes a “key consumer technology” — with more than 17 million wearable bands (alone) forecast to ship this year, rising to 23 million by 2015, and more than 45 million by 2017.

So that’s only wearable tech targeting the wrist, such as the Fitbit fitness tracker and Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch — it does not include devices aiming to squat on other body-parts (such as Google Glass). In short: tech makers gonna put a smart ring on it. Many are already trying.

On the ‘who is already making what’ front, wearable tech research and consulting firm Vandrico has put together this neat overview of the space — tracking the number of devices in existence; areas of market focus; and even which parts of the body are being targeted most.

(The most popular anatomical target for wearables is the wrists, since you’re curious — with 56 devices vying for that small patch of flesh; followed by the head, with 34 devices wanting to cling to it. On the flip side, the least popular body part for wearables thus far is apparently the hand, with just two devices listed, although the data doesn’t delve into the crotch region, so, yeah, there’s there too. Makers apparently not falling over themselves to fashion iCodpieces…).

According to Vandrico, there are some 115 wearables in play already; with an average selling price of $431; and with lifestyle, fitness and medical being the most popular market areas targeted (in that order).

The researcher has also taken the time to list and profile every single one of the 115 wearables it reckons are currently in play, so you don’t have to — from 3L Labs Footlogger to the ZTE Bluewatch (another mobile maker doing a smartwatch, who knew?).

Or at least all of the wearables its research has turned up. It’s asking for submissions for missing devices so it can keep expanding this database. (I’m going to throw the Fin into the ring on that front.)

Click here to check out — and start quantifying — the data for yourself.

[Image by IntelFreePress via Flickr]

We’re finally starting to see some real consolidation around wearable tech, and Kickstarter project The Dash is a great example of that trend in action. It’s a pair of Bluetooth in-ear headphones that also offer up performance tracking via in-built health and body sensors. With passive noise cancellation, pass-through audio transparency when you need it, and an ear bone transduction microphone, these really do seem like gadgets that take existing gadget real estate (everyone uses headphones at some point) and make the most out of it.

The Dash gets rid of wires entirely, offering instead a pair of completely discrete earbuds that can work with a connected smartphone, or completely on their own via an internal 4GB of storage for loading up your own songs directly. That would probably be enough to recommend them to athletes and active users who want to get the cables out of the way, but The Dash also has an ear bone mic that eliminates background interference, and it acts as a fully fledged activity tracker, with built-in heart rate, oxygen saturation and energy-expenditure monitoring.

You can also control playback from the on-device touch sensitive surface, as well as turn off passive audio noise cancellation to fully hear your surroundings, which is handy if you’re running in a busy city. The left bud controls your activity monitoring (you can get audio updates on your current measured stats), while the right one manages audio controls, including audio volume and playlist selection.

Dash creator Bragi, which is based in Munich, wants to turn the gadget into a broadly focused platform, however, with an SDK for third-party developers that allows them to reimagine what it can offer users. They see it as a communication device for emergency responders, for instance, or as an in-ear translation device for communicating in foreign languages, or as one part of a larger overall sensor system for use in medicine.

It’s easy to see why The Dash has raised over $250,000 of its $260,000 goal already, given the starting price of $199 for new backers for pre-order pledges. If it works as advertised, the gadget will replace a number of different devices in one convenient, comfortable package. The team has a great pedigree; CEO Nikolaj Hviid is a former design chief at Harman, and so has experience building consumer products for the mass market.

The anticipated delivery date for The Dash is October,2014, which means we don’t have long to wait to see if these really can deliver on their apparent potential. It’s not quite One Wearable To Rule Them All, but it’s getting there, and that’s welcome news for consumers overwhelmed with niche products that offer relatively little in the way of lasting value.