Wearable technology mainly concerns devices and apparel/ textiles. Devices are discrete electronic and electrical hardware sold on its own for bodywear. It may be utilised by being attached to apparel or by constituting worn accessories such as electronic watches and earphones.
Glasses, jewellery, headgear, belts, armwear, wristwear, legwear, footwear and even skin patches are involved and the device business is already large.
By contrast, the apparel/textiles option concerns electronics and electrics integral in or distributed through apparel including rucksacks and bandages.
It will be a big business later in the decade. It involves disruptive new technologies: it is not incremental at all and it will even enable electronic fashion and luxury goods.
As the wearable electronics business powers over five times from over $14 billion today to over US$70 billion in 2024, the dominant sector by value will remain the increasingly merged medical, healthcare, fitness, wellness sector.
It has the largest number of big names behind the most promising new developments such as Adidas, Accenture, Fujitsu, Nike, Philips, Reebock, Roche, Samsung and SAP, with Apple recruiting top people from that industry for obvious reasons.
Their intellectual property is profound: their agenda is heroic, addressing many of the biggest issues of our time such as the greying of the population, the epidemic of obesity and diabetes.
This even extends to a replacement pancreas as a skin patch and exoskeletons and limbs to make the disabled whole again.
The advanced infotainment sector will grow to exceed it in numbers but not value in 2024. Here, Google Glass and other eyewear will be a large sub-sector alongside smart wristwear.
Smart glasses have excellent hands free user interfaces such as speaking to you, voice recognition and “blink to take a picture” and they are very easy to use compared to most wristwear, with the exception of the popular fitness-monitoring wristbands.
Advanced infotainment does not have a particularly heroic agenda in the main. For instance, it makes mobile phones more useful and provides more realistic video games through vibrating suits and 3D headwear, attracting little support from governments.
Just as the first volume wearable electronics – basic earphones and electronic wrist watches – moved to China at collapsed prices, the largely conventional electronics in most wearable advanced infotainment today means that much of it will also be commoditised within the decade.
As yet, there is no equivalent to Samsung cornering OLEDs for early smart phones and Apple cornering other valued early smart phone technology.
