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.
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Industry Highlights
Wearable data has been used in another legal case This time, to refute rape claims made by a woman in Pennsylvania. Fitbit data from the woman was used by the police as part of the evidence to charge a woman for knowingly filing a false report. The data showed that she was active and awake during the time of the reported crime. Last year, a Calgary case used Fitbit data in an injury claims suit.
Jaguar is using wearable tech and in-ground sensors to measure the excitement at Wimbledon this year. Select spectators will wear biometric wristbands to capture heart rate, movement, and location, while in-ground sensors will measure crowd movements and audio levels in a campaign called Feel Wimbledon.
Telepathy to come after VR says Facebook CEO. Zuckerberg gave some insight into his vision of communication in the future in a recent townhall Q&A. The social network founder mused of a future where thoughts could be sent directly to one another using technology.
Statistics & Forecasts
Samsung ranks #1 for patents filed for wearables says report (Forbes)
M2M, IoT & wearable technology ecosystem market will account $116 billion in network connectivity revenue by the end of 2020 (CMO)
Enterprise wearables in the U.S. an $8.5 billion market by 2020 (Datamation)
Slice Intelligence data suggests that Fitbit products are outselling the Apple Watch (Bloomberg)
Pacific Crest Securities analyst Brad Hargreaves slashes Apple Watch forecasts for third and fourth quarter of 2015 to 10.5 million from 11 million (New York Post)
Device Announcements
Casio announced its first smartwatch (Wired)
Barclays launched updated bPay wearable wristband (The Guardian)
Cambridge Industrial Design launched wearable tech for cows (Cult of Mac)
LG Chem unveiled a new hexagonal battery for wearables (9to5 Google)
Jaunt unveiled The Neo, a virtual reality camera (The Verge)
Huawei announced new smartwatch Honor (Engadget)
Samsung confirmed Gear VR will be available in Canada on July 17 (MobileSyrup)
Pebble Time available for pre-order on Best Buy Canada (MobileSyrup)
Funding, Crowdfunding, and M&A
Rithmio wearable movement platform raised $3 million in seed funding (ChicagoInno)
3D imaging company Matterport raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Qualcomm (Forbes)
Major Milestones
Vuzix M100 smartglasses now support iOS and Android (PR Newswire)
Ameritrae launched an Apple Watch app (Forbes)
VLC iOS app updated with Apple Watch support (9to5 Mac)
SAP now beta testing smartwatch apps (eWeek)
Novartis launched an Apple Watch navigation app for the visually impaired (Fierce Medical Devices)
Hyundai launched app for Apple Watch (USA Today)
Rio Caraeff, the founding CEO of music video service Vevo, has joined Magic Leap (Billboard)
Rumours
Apple Watch patent suggests that social gestures might be coming to the Watch (MobileSyrup)
Google smart contact lens packaging patent suggests this device might be coming sooner than we think (TechTimes)
Apple Watch 2 to keep same design but have bigger battery (Cult of Mac)
Google patent suggests company will use head mounted computers to create keyboards on body parts (Quartz)
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!