An Introduction To Wearable Technology

Wearable technology is “clothing or accessories that have elements of technology in it”. It finds it’s home in fashion statements, health and fitness tracking, hearing devices, navigation tools, communication devices, and within gaming. Wearable technology can be seen everywhere.

Whats the history?

Wearable technology has a long history, starting way back in the 13th century to when the glasses were first invented. Pocket watches were the biggest wearable tech during the 16th century. The first ever wearable computer was created in the 1960’s by Edward Thorp to allow him to cheat at the Roulette Wheel. His device was small enough to fit within his shoe.

The first major device that changed the way wearable technology was seen as was the invention of the digital hearing aid back in the 80’s which provided more flexibility and customization to individuals who struggled to hear. Before the invention of the digital hearing aid, wearable technology was considered to be calculator wristwatches and regular watches, but now it was showing uses in more than just a simple calculator.

In 2002, the wearable technology became more wide stream thanks to the Bluetooth headset. This made it possible for users to answer phones wirelessly and allow for easier use of communication.

In 2012, a company called Pebble arrived on the Kickstarter scene, they promised a smart watch that would read notifications and provide its users with a fully customizable watch face. Their Kickstarter turned out to be the most popular Kickstarter to ever happen at the time.

When Pebble launched, all their promised watches were sold out within 5 days. In 2014, Pebble reached a massive milestone of selling one million watches.

With the popularity of the Pebble, other companies such as Apple and Fitbit started to create other smartwatches. Apple created the Apple Watch, and Fitbit created a series of extremely popular health trackers that doubled as watches.

With the now overfilling smart watch market, Pebble struggled to keep up with the giants of the industry and decided to sell the company to Fitbit in the beginning of 2017. Once Pebble announced the merger, a group of individuals decided to work together to make a free and open-source operating system called “Rebble” that will allow the spirit of Pebble to live on. Fitbit has announced the support for Pebble devices will end June 30th 2018.

While Pebble was at their prime in the smartwatch industry, there was another company working on a different aspect of the market. Google had released their long awaited Google Glass prototype to a small group of users. The Google Glass was meant to be worn as glasses and had a small camera in the corner. The Google Glass caused major controversy over privacy issues due to the camera on them. Google decided to cancel the project.

Today, wearable technology has an extremely wide reach. It has a home in gaming with VR headsets, that allow players to immerse themselves in the games they play. Wearables live within the healthcare industry saving lives and helping people. We see wearables everyday for fitness and style choices.

Though wearable popularity has skyrocketed, the market for wearables continues to show the pros and cons. With most items, companies are trying to push the limits of what they can turn normal clothing into wearable tech. Through this we see items that are consistently arriving on Kickstarter to try and be the next big thing within the industry. We find failures within devices that nobody wants or needs, but overall, the companies that survive, and the technology that works becomes very successful.

Wearable technology continues to be a popular choice for people and the market continues to grow as more devices are made to make life easier.

In my next post I will be talking about why it matters so much to developers to be involved in the ever-growing market of wearable technology.

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