MUNICH – This week, Munich was home to the 14th annual Wearable Technologies Conference – Europe. There was a large showing of participants ranging from startups still in the funding phase, to well-established, large organizations. Many industries were touched upon – fitness, health care, lifestyle and industrial – to name a few. The event was an enjoyable mix of presentations, demonstrations, networking and a competition for the Innovation World Cup Award.
There were products that I considered, some that made me go “huh?” and many in between. When looking at the wearables space, you may know that I believe wearables are boring, and I said as much to many of the individuals I spoke with at the event. It’s important to add, however, why I feel that way and that everyone I expressed this view to at the event agreed.
The wearables space is crowded and getting more crowded every day, so how does one differentiate itself in a way that is meaningful to the end user? I mean, how many fitness bands and sports watches can one person possibly want to buy? So let’s say your product is different. Great, now someone buys it, wears it, gathers information about whatever it is they are doing via an app and then maybe the app makes recommendations. Now what? It’s up to you to act on this information in a meaningful way. How long does it take until it gets boring?
What makes wearables such an interesting topic? The “Internet of Things.” That is how I approached my discussions at the event and found a great deal of enthusiastic agreement that IoT is an integral part of the wearables discussion. There needs to be integration with other users, experts, connectivity services, security programs, etc. That is why wearables is becoming such an exciting growth industry. Not because there’s a new sports watch that looks cooler then the last one. Although I was happy to see companies like Intel partnering to offer a product that the female audience might actually want to wear on a regular basis from a fashion perspective. More on that later.
The keynote speaker on the first day was Christian Stammel, founder and CEO of Wearable Technologies. Some of the topics he presented really make you think about the opportunity here. The first point is that there is only so much real estate on the human body and how many different things one person is going to wear. Amen to that point. He also talked about “wristables” and “hearables” signaling further market segmentation within the wearables arena.
A couple of presentations related to these two areas to highlight were from Intel and Bragi. As mentioned earlier, Intel has created MICA, a smart watch masquerading as a stylish bracelet. The company partnered with Barney’s and Opening Ceremony to launch the product. I tried it on and it was a bit heavy, but quite attractive. If you’re a fan of bulky jewelry, as I am, it wasn’t any heavier then a normal bracelet.
Bragi, from right here in Munich, has developed a hearable; earbuds that do an amazing number of things. The video below explains it much better than I can, but here are the key takeaways. Bragi considers itself “anti-cloud.” Your data is your data and it stays with you. The company approached investors for funding, and they all said no, it won’t work, no one will buy it, it doesn’t make sense. So Bragi went to Kickstarter and raised $3.4 million in funding, and ended up winning a Best of CES award. Lesson learned – there is still a lot of learning going on in this space as to what consumers want and how they might use these products.
It would take far too long to detail all of the finalists in the World Cup competition, but some of the topics are so innovative, it’s worth listing them and their contact information along with a few comments for those of you who would like to explore further.
Sport and fitness
Heddoko – smart sports garments to teach athletes how to improve their techniques. Watch for a deeper review of this company on RCR Wireless News in the near future.
Myovolt – electronic sports therapy that applies vibrating energy to specific muscles.
Notch – wearable motion capture in 3D.
Stretch Sense – stretch sensors for smart sports fabric and the category winner really makes a great deal of sense. Many of today’s wearables include bulky sensors to capture data, and I don’t see that working for most athletes. Stretch Sense is solving a real problem in this category.
 Health and wellness
WEMU – solutions for an epilepsy diagnosis.
BitBite – collects and analyzes your eating data: How much you are chewing to enhance your eating awareness. I have to say this one made me wonder how big the potential market would be for this product.
UpRight – a product to train your posture.
WinPack – wireless medical systems for clinicians, nurses and doctors.
DermoPatch – transdermic drug delivery platform and the category winner. The technology helps to manage and deliver drugs targeted at preventative medicine, anti-aging and controlled pain relief.
Safety and security
Baseband Technologies – a low-power GPS chipset.
Oncall Body Cameras – aimed at first responders.
ProGlove – business intelligence for production facilities, worker productivity management.
Ispopod – a safety belt with GSM, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Dash7. This product monitors for falls, attacks, illness and strangulation and calls for help. I wonder if people will want to wear something like this on a daily basis and what actual value it adds without a high number of hubs to gather the information.
Tech Air Street – advanced electronic airbag system for motorcycle riders and the category winner. This is pretty cool and, as an equestrian, I wonder if there’s also an application for horse riders.
Gaming and lifestyle
Wees – a wristband that enables finger-gesture control as a user interface.
COBI – a smart connected bike. Watch for a deeper review of this company on RCR Wireless News in the near future.
TACTspace – sensory messaging to enable tactical messaging. Send a touch-, warming- or smell-related message. I thought it was interesting until they got to the part about messaging to a woman’s bra.
Sendrato – smart festival wristbands. They were the winner of this category and the overall winner. Watch for a deeper review of this company on RCR Wireless News in the near future.
Smart clothing
FabriXense – biomedical monitoring via smart clothing.
Sensoria Fitness Socks – track foot strike data to help reduce running related injuries. They were the winner of this category.
What does all this tell us? To me it shows the opportunities for innovation are endless and limited only by human imagination. There are also many ideas that can disrupt the way we live and think. On the flip side, it also shows there’s a lot of market clutter out there that will need to be sorted through before consumers truly embrace these technologies.
Like what you read? Follow me on twitter!
Claudia Bacco, Managing Director – EMEA for RCR Wireless News, has spent her entire career in telecom, IT and security. Having experience as an operator, software and hardware vendor and as a well-known industry analyst, she has many opinions on the market. She’ll be sharing those opinions along with ongoing trend analysis for RCR Wireless News.
