Will 2015 Be The Year For Wearables?

The year 2014 brought Apple Pay, but it hasn’t made mobile payments take off quite yet. The year 2015 will bring a new set of wearables into the market, including the Apple Watch. There’s been a lot said about the market, but what are the industry experts saying about what they think next year brings for wearables?

Computer Business Review broke down its “Top 6 wearable predictions for 2015.” Here’s what people in the industry have to say:

  • Will watches be worn?: “Apple fanatics worldwide expect wearables will go mainstream following the emergence of [Apple Watch], but I’m not so sure. Let’s face it, nobody under 35 wears a watch anymore  — they rely on their smartphones for everything,” said Jeremy Burton, President, Products and Marketing at EMC. “A lot of wearables will fail … with the guys wearing their Bluetooth ear piece all day propping up the market. Now, that said, not all wearable technology will end in abject failure. Standalone, niche wearables that shake up industries for the better – such as FitBits or Jawbones that monitor vitals or health activity – will continue to flourish and be incorporated into sports clothing, shoes and equipment.”
  • Mainstream adoption?: “For wearables to become mainstream they will need to be standalone devices in their own right, and not part of a costly ecosystem. You could say that 2015 will be the year wearables evolve beyond the hype of 2014,” said Graham Thomas, Solution Technologist at Lenovo.
  • First footing: “In 2015 wearables will find their first footing in the enterprise, which will alter the way companies look at BYOD device policies and solutions. Businesses need to expect and prepare for this shift from a data security standpoint,” said Yorgen Edholm, CEO of Accellion.
  • Risk knowledge: “The current products from Pebble, Samsung, Sony etc. will continue to evolve and compete, but the Apple product is likely to bring this mainstream. From a CIO perspective this will have impact from an internal security perspective as another form of BYOD,” said Kevin Linsell, head of service development at Adapt told CBR.
  • Wearable connections: “Wearable tech is huge right now but, towards the end of 2015, we will be seeing the first real examples of wearables interconnecting with smart home devices, to enable users to personalize their home – so music follows them into every room they enter or lights turn on based on the homeowner’s preferences,” said Jon Carter, UK Head of Business Development at Connected Home at Deutsche Telekom.
  • Emerging markets impact: “To date, manufacturers have targeted Western consumers with wearables because of the high cost of the device and the active tech early adopter crowd. However we believe emerging markets are the perfect market for wearables,” Upstream CEO Marco Veremis told CBR.

So will wearables be the talk of the industry in 2015? Field experts seem to put a lot of stock in them, but we’ll have to see if the technology stacks up with consumer interest.