Welcome to The Wearable Weekly, your trusted guide to all things wearable tech. If you only have time to read one thing about wearables this week, this is it.
Don’t forget to subscribe to The Wearable Weekly using the form below to make sure it hits your email inbox every week!
Statistics and Forecasts
Global wearables market to grow 17 percent in 2017, 310 million devices sold, $30.5 billion revenue: Gartner (TechCrunch)
One quarter of Apple Watch owners already using watch daily for phone calls, says survey (9to5 Mac)
Smart clothing and body sensor shipments to reach 119 million units annually by 2022, according to Tractica (Business Wire)
Wearable sensors market expected to grow from USD $0.309 billion in 2017 to USD $1.067 billion in 2022 (Business Wire)
Device Announcements
HTC drops price of Vive by $200 (TechCrunch)
Samsung is releasing a new Gear VR that fits the Note 8 (The Verge)
Star Wars launches augmented reality toys (The Verge)
Funding & M&A
NeuraLink raises $27 million to build brain computers (Bloomberg)
Matterport raises $5 million from Ericsson Ventures (TechCrunch)
Sliver.tv raises $6.2 million to bring VR to eSports (VentureBeat)
Major milestones
Google Glass iOS app updated with 64-bit support (9to5 Google)
Mio licenses its proprietary PAI technology to the Lenovo brand of wearables (SYS-CON)
Fitbit may have a new way to detect an irregular heartbeat (TIME)
Samsung launches Gear VR app Relúmĭno that aids the visually impaired (The Verge)
KFC is using VR to train employees (Eater)
Isobar launches the world’s first virtual reality emotional measurement and analytics platform (Business Wire)
Rumours
Samsung will launch a new Gear smartwatch next week ahead of the Apple Watch (CNBC)
Microsoft patents an augmented reality wand (The Verge)
Google may be working on Google Assistant headphones (MobileSyrup)
HTC may be selling its Vive VR business (Engadget)
iOS 11 beta hints at a variety of new Workouts likely coming soon to Apple Watch (9to5 Mac)
Subscribe to The Wearable Weekly
Don’t forget to subscribe to The Wearable Weekly using the form below to make sure it hits your email inbox every week!
Photo via TIME