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
More than 200 million consumer virtual reality head-mounted displays (HMDs) will be sold worldwide by 2020 according to Tractica (Fortune)
VR title development doubles from 7% to 16% this year according to developer survey (Variety)
The market growth expected for VR headsets and finds it to be shipping in volumes of over 10 million units by 2019 (BusinessWire)
Investments In Virtual And Augmented Reality Hit Nearly $700M in 2015, says Digi-Capital report (TechCrunch)
Enterprise AR and wearable market may reach just under US$800 million by 2020, says Beecham (IT Pro Portal)
Fitbit and Apple Watch triggered an 118% surge in sales of wearable tech in the UK, 3 million wearables sold in UK last in 2015 (Daily Mail)
The market size of haptics technology in consumer electronics is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 21% until 2019, says Technavio (Business Wire)
Lenovo sold 10,000 mobile VR bundles in seconds (Yahoo)
Device Announcements
Apple Watch Hermes goes on sale (MobileSyrup)
Samsung giving Gear VR for free with purchase of select Galaxy Phones (TechCrunch)
Oculus Rift will be in retail stores in April (RoadtoVR)
Wearable Startup Leaf partners with ZIVEG To Launch Smart Jewellery (The Tech Portal)
ODG now shipping R-7 augmented reality glasses (CNBC)
HP debuts the Titan Juxt smartwatch (Wareable)
Funding, Crowdfunding & M&A
Jawbone adds $165M in equity funding (MobiHealthNews)
Major Milestones
YouTube hires Global VR Evangelist (Re/Code)
New survey positions ODG R-7 as best all around smart glasses (Sys-Con)
Crytek launches VR First Labs to help colleges develop VR (Engadget)
Fox Sports and NextVR live stream premier boxing championships (Fortune)
DARPA reveals details on program to create neural interface between computers and the human brain (SlashGear)
Samsung opening VR production studio in NYC (PC Mag)
Twitter’s Jason Toff joins Google to work on VR (9to5 Google)
Rumours
Apple’s recent hire of a top VR researcher suggests its getting into VR (WSJ)
New Apple Watch designs coming in March with Apple Watch 2 to debut in September (MobileSyrup)
Google patent suggests Google is figuring out how to monetize VR & AR (Inverse)
HTC smartwatch rumoured to launch at MWC (TechRadar)
New health-focused Samsung wearable expected to be announced at MWC (Ubergizmo)
New job posting suggests Google is getting ready to make its own VR HMD (TechCrunch)
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!
Image source: Samsung