Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years then the buzz around wearable technology shouldn't come as a surprise. But how many different products and applications do you know besides the usual suspects of fitness tracking and smartwatches?
Humankind has always been driven by a desire to augment our natural abilities in order to better adapt to and control our environments. (Scott Lachut, PSFK Labs)
You'll need a large monitor and a good set of eyes to read the comprehensive Future Of Wearable Tech report by PSFK but it's well worth it.
Wearable tech + market research = will they blend?
Wearable technology promises to be the holy grail of market research as it offers intimate data about the person, their habits without having to ask questions.
As a mobile market research company we're certainly keeping a keen eye on the wearables trend. In many cases mobile will be the control device for any wearables, the way data gets collected and sent to the cloud for display and analysis.
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Only 5 months ago in September we looked at the ownership and awareness of fitness trackers and smartwatches and the numbers were quite low (click through for the free report).
Since then a lot has happened - plenty of people got a wearable device for Christmas, and the CES in January in Las Vegas saw the launch of a myriad of new devices. Some of the solutions in PSFK's report are still a few years in the future - batteries need to evolve, prices need to come down, practical applications to be developed.
The trend, however, is clear - more and more of our everyday technology will be worn, embedded, live invisibly in the background.
