The smartwatch has lived up to the hype. Can other wearable technologies follow its lead?

Will wearable technology ever realize its potential? Exciting technical innovations that should succeed often disappoint commercially, failing to take off for reasons that can be difficult to define.

Some forecasters would already have us walking around in clothing made from smart textiles that can monitor vital signs such as respiration and body temperature, track sports performance or fatigue levels, or assist treatment such as posture correction or physiotherapy. On the other hand, we could be routinely interacting with the world through AR glasses that overlay everything we need to know, wherever we are, minute by minute, and record our experiences wherever we go. And perhaps our wearables should be battery-free, powered by energy-harvesting technologies that can turn movement, daylight, or even the difference between hot and cold, into enough electrical energy to keep us connected all the way to the furthest extremities of the grid.

While these all have their place in the modern world – augmented reality is making inroads in industrial scenarios such as on production lines and in vehicle maintenance, and controls powered by ambient energy have been commercialized for smart-building applications – the massive, all-pervading adoption within consumer markets has not come about.

Smartwatches, however, represent a segment of the wearables market that is now delivering on its promise and living up to the hype; perhaps the one single wearable product category that has become truly successful in the consumer domain. The category has taken off largely by providing accurate, convenient health and fitness tracking. People love gadgets that can make them healthier and fitter, and a smartwatch on the wrist is in an optimal place to capture reliable and extensive data about movements, activities and signals such as heart rate and temperature. By connecting to the user’s smartphone, that data also become easy to access and visualize.

Previous technological generations have given us gadgets like pedometers that could be easily carried in the pocket to provide basic step counting, from which distances walked can be calculated reasonably accurately and easily. Similarly, heart rate monitors became fashionable with the creation of ECG chest straps that are simple enough for consumers to figure out and convenient to wear. Subsequently, optical pulse counting using photoplethysmography has taken simplified, non-invasive heart rate monitoring to a new level.

Even those pedometers and HRMs, however, are relatively niche accessories; HRMs, in particular, remain the preserve of serious or semi-serious athletes. The secret of smartwatches’ success lies in the arrival and coalescence of multiple constituent technologies: tiny, robust MEMS inertial sensors, satellite positioning, Bluetooth personal area networking leading to the low-energy technology that connects our devices today, as well as the smartphone. Or perhaps I should say the smartphone app, the concept that provides the dashboard for so many essential activities of modern living: banking, social media, shopping, traveling and car parking. And – connected to the smartwatch as the data-gathering device – fitness activity tracking.

This is a revolution that has spread to give us hybrid watches that combine connected functionalities with traditional styles, while on the other hand enabling the extension of specialized equipment such as dive watches. These have evolved to provide far more than traditional time and depth monitoring when underwater. Not only adding typical smartwatch features, the latest models go much further by providing hundreds of customizable sports modes that can tailor the watch behavior for diverse pursuits from mountain biking, trail running and mountaineering, to weight training and yoga. And, of course, diving, with modes for freediving and scuba diving. There is also help with recovery after training, and with this kind of built-in expertise, it’s easy to see an opportunity to introduce AI into the mix and take things further. We could soon all have access to Olympic-level coaching to help us toward our goals.

With next-generation biosensors now emerging, which can manage multiple channels of body signals, the continuing trend of converging advanced technologies in the smartwatch could create many more new avenues for development. In the future, these devices could give us accurate early warnings of disease or mental health indications that could empower us to seek help sooner, and perhaps even find a suitable counselor nearby and arrange a consultation through the Internet.

This once geeky accessory, the smartwatch, has become a $30 billion market with unit sales of 150 million per year. The market continues to grow at about 10% CAGR, with the greatest revenues coming from North America and Europe and the fastest growth in Asia and the Far East. To see what’s coming next in wearable tech, we could look to the emerging markets for smart rings. Integrating more or less the same technologies as smartwatches, they can offer advantages such as ruggedness and extended battery life for applications such as heart monitoring, sleep tracking and payments.

On the other hand, could some of those untapped technologies like smart fabrics show us that they have simply been waiting for the right complementary technologies to create a new and unimagined market? We may only find out when, or if, it happens.

Alun Morgan is technology ambassador at Ventec International Group (venteclaminates.com); alun.morgan@ventec-europe.com. His column runs monthly.

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