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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Statistics & Forecasts
Citi predicts hardware sales will be the primary driver of the industry’s growth and the VR and AR market worth $692 billion by 2025 — rising to more than a trillion by the following decade (CNBC)
42 percent of US consumers aged 8-64 years old said they were very or somewhat interested in virtual reality, according to a survey by research firm Magid Advisors (CNET)
Over 140,000 HTC Vive units sold (Focus Taiwan)
Cleveland Clinic study examined four popular devices and found that their heart rate monitors are wrong 10 to 20 percent of the time (USA Today)
Apple Watch is the most accurate fitness tracker, according to study that finds Apple Watch 90 percent accurate at measuring heart rate (Time)
Device Announcements
PlayStation VR now available to consumers (MobileSyrup)
HoloLens launches in Europe, New Zealand, Australia (CNBC)
Valve shows off new controller prototypes for HTC Vive (MobileSyrup)
Nike Apple Watch being released October 28 (MobileSyrup)
MediaTek announces MT2511 and MT2523 SoC for wearables (FirstPost)
Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell launches a VR company (Engadget)
Samsung announces new chip that could make LTE smartwatches smaller (The Verge)
Funding & M&A
Scottish wearable tech company Snap40 raises £2 million (Digitalhealth.net)
Facebook’s Oculus acquires InfiniLED to produce better displays (Yahoo)
Valve an investor in Nitero, which is making a WiFi chip to untether AR/VR devices (UploadVR)
MEL Science raises $2.5 million to put a VR twist on chemistry sets (TechCrunch)
Major Milestones
HTC Vive X opens submissions for AR/VR startups (VR Focus)
cognitiveVR tools lets devs see heatmaps of players (Gamasutra)
Thalmic Labs opening Waterloo factory to manufacture wearable tech (The Record)
BMW unveils augmented reality concept with HUD (Business Insider)
Oculus Gear VR disabled on all Note 7 devices (Tech Times)
Rumours
Google Android Wear 2.0 watches are coming early next year (The Verge)
Apple patent uses heart rate to identify users (Slashgear)
Google to create their own Android Wear watches next year (PC World)
Alibaba is working on a VR shopping system (CNET)
Apple Watch patent shows off potential new gesture controls (TechnoBuffalo)
Cancelled Microsoft Band 3 images leaked (MobileSyrup)
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!