The next 12 months are likely to prove a tipping point for the take off of wearable computing. That was the message delivered by Thomas van Manen, an analyst at VNT, in a speech on the future of wearable technologies.
Addressing delegates at the 2014 Digital Innovators’ Summit in Berlin, van Manen said that while wearable media has been evolving for many years, 2014 will be a pivotal year for the industry, citing recent Business Insider research that predicted the wearable media market will double in size by 2017.
“Computers and technology in general have been becoming more personal and more intimate for many years,” he added. “It’s nothing new. From the very first computers that were very big through to our personal computers and more recently our tablets and smartphones, technologies have been becoming more personal. Wearable technology is really the next stage of that. Our intimate relationship with technology is not a revolution.”
Van Manen added that mobility, new data streams, new ways of story telling and the fact that consumers’ bodies are becoming APIs are the ingredients that will drive the uptake of wearable computing.
“It’s a signpost for context driven interactions,” he said. “GoogleGlass, for example, is not just a camera. It can deliver information to me that is relevant to what I’m doing, such as telling me in advance of a journey that there are delays on the road and I should leave earlier – or just delivering me the football scores of my favourite team without me asking for them.”