In my previous post I talked about What are wearables? So now I want to discuss some of the popular kinds of wearables that are available today.

We’re in the early days of wearable devices, but the technology is rapidly maturing, with more than 17 million wearable bands predicted to ship in 2014 and projections of an $8 billion wearable market by 2018. According to a recent Nielsen survey, 15 percent of consumers already use a wearable technology of some kind, wristbands being the most popular of these devices (61 percent of early adopters own at least one), followed by watches (45 percent) and miscellaneous health-related devices (17 percent). Glasses currently hold a tiny fraction of the market share, but many technology giants offer or are developing wearables of this variety. Here is a description of the three most popular kinds of wearables on the market today.

Popular kinds of wearables available now
1. Wristbands

This class of wearables resides on the wrist due to convenience (easy to slip on and take off, easily visible to both the person and others, comfortable) and proximity to the radial artery. Wristbands typically enable heart rate monitoring and offer some minimal display capabilities to the consumer. Examples are myriad including the FitBit, Jawbone and the now discontinued Nike Fuelband.

2. Watches

Consumers are particularly aware of the smart watch class of wearables, partly due to the ever-persistent iWatch rumors (and corresponding media speculation). Like the wristbands, watches are also worn on the wrist due to convenience but offer a higher fidelity display. These watches also often carry more electronics in a larger footprint and thus offer more capabilities such as GPS and temperature sensing. While an iWatch has yet to materialize, there are many high-quality examples available on the market today including offerings from Suunto, Garmin, Samsung and Pebble.

3. Glasses

The glasses class of wearables offers a small number of examples but includes the famous (or infamous?) Google Glass. The primary value add of these devices is to augment, enhance or supersede human vision with additional (or alternative) visual information. One example from popular culture of a functional wearable glass technology is the enhanced vision of the Terminator and Predator (real-time information on the objects being viewed).

An exciting new entrant to the market, the Oculus Rift, replaces the human field of vision with a virtual one. While technically not a wearable in the traditional sense (a device that augments, rather than replaces, one’s reality), these devices are too exciting not to mention. They are really a game-changing technology and are, after all, worn on the head. So I’m counting them as wearables and will be blogging about them in the future!

My predictions about wearable devices

• You will likely see the capabilities of the wristband and watch merge into a single device sometime in the very near future.
• Glasses of some kind will succeed. There is a clear place in the market for virtual reality headsets. In my opinion, augmented reality glasses are less likely to succeed.
• Every category of clothing accessory (shoes, scarves, gloves and so on) will eventually produce a successful wearable of some kind. Wearables should be thought of as smart accessories.
• Manufacturers will attempt to incorporate wearable technologies into clothing but I don’t think they are likely to succeed. The benefits of enhancing clothing (perhaps changing your shirt’s color according to the light in the room) are beyond the capabilities of modern or near-term technology. The other potential use cases (monitoring of one’s body) will be covered more effectively by other kinds of wearables.

That’s my summary of the kinds of wearables on the market today along with a few predictions about where things are going in the near term. Comments? Suggestions? Angry letters? Send them to @bfletch183 on Twitter!

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