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 & Forecasts
78% Of people would use wearables for health tracking, according to Accenture’s 2016 Consumer Survey on Patient Engagement (ARC)
8 of the top 10 tech companies in the world are invested in VR/AR (UploadVR)
10% of teachers said they’d be most excited to introduce virtual reality headsets in the classroom up from 5% last year, according to TES (Quartz)
559.6M wearables, 87M activity trackers will ship in 2021, according to Tractica (MobiHealthNews)
Only 33% of people are aware of major VR devices in the US, survey says (Mashable)
Dodocase debuts portable pocket-size VR viewer (Mac World)
Sony debuted Concept N headphones (The Verge)
Device Announcements
Fossil debuts its latest fitness band the Fossil Q Motion (CNET)
Manus VR gloves announced to support HTC Vive (Tech Times)
Toyota’s Project Blaid is a wearable to help the blind (Engadget)
Funding, Crowdfunding & M&A
Valencell secures $11M in Series D funding (Valencell)
Intel acquires Replay Technologies for $170M (WSJ)
Penrose Studios raises $8.5M for VR content (Re/Code)
Major Milestones
Wearable tech gets its own stock market index (MarketWatch)
Pebble released its latest “huge” software update (Wareable)
Fox Sports bringing courtside seats to all for March Madness via Virtual Reality (Engadget)
Olympics will air in 8K and in virtual reality this year (Engadget)
Kaleidoscope launches world tour of its VR film festival starting in London (Wareable)
Immy granted patent on natural eye optics for AR/VR devices (VentureBeat)
Oculus launches social profiles for Gear VR (USA Today)
Coachella gets a VR app (The Verge)
NASA makes Skype call with HoloLens (Motherboard)
Six Flags rolling out VR rollercoasters (MobileSyrup)
Rumours
Playstation VR announcement expected at GDC this week (Road to VR)
Amazon rumoured to be getting into VR from recent job posting (Variety)
Apple patent suggests that the Apple Watch could become more medical with intent to save lives (Apple Insider)
SnapChat is assembling a team to create smart glasses (Mashable)
Google rumoured to be working on ways for developers to earn revenue on Cardboard apps (Re/Code)
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!