Wearable technology will take centerstage this year

Over the years we have come across wearable devices in the form of smartwatches, wearable glasses and other devices that cater to user's health, needs and senses. The market is yet to understand the place for wearable technology but sooner than later the change in dynamics of consumer behaviour will define the making of such devices.

More standalone wearable products expected

Major technology companies agree that wearable products are meant to supplement your primary devices like smartphone right now but going forward, their functionality will become more and more standalone. Smart wearable bands are multi-purpose devices that can run third-party computing applications and are designed to be worn on the body, and not carried, as per leading research experts.

Tech experts across the globe have highlighted the premature functionality of smartwatches but tech is constantly improving, so expect to see more and better wearable devices to enter the market this year. The market will gain more traction when giants like Microsoft, Apple and LG make their foray into the wearable technology arena giving impetus to such devices. According to Canalys, smartwatches are set to explode by the end of 2014, growing tenfold as a new generation of devices from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung and others are launched.

Wearable tech in healthcare

What really connects these two trends together is optimizing productivity technology. With wearable tech, devices are always communicating with us connected to a hub or host in this case smartphones. Wearable devices need not only cater to end users, they have a role to play in the health sector with hospitals making use of wearable technology to simplify process of treatment, says Rajiv Kapur, managing director, Broadcom India.

Room for all

With the rise of smartwatches, companies will have to design their specific applications in such a way that the transition from mobile devices to the wearable devices happens hassle-free. Software platforms tied to smartwatches offer tremendous opportunity for developers to write apps in categories such as health and wellness or sports and fitness. Broadcom calls the wearable computing as a subtext of internet of things phenomena.

"Earlier companies used to think that by cramming up the application's design one can fit them to the smart watches but now the industry is going through a big design renaissance to figure out the puzzle behind offering the best app user experience on smart watches", said Troy Malone, general manager - APAC for Evernote, the popular note taking app which is available on smartwatches also.

Integrating connectivity

For wearable devices all the known connectivity options like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS will exist to make wearable tech a success but the need to evolve is fairly apparent. Bluetooth has been customized into a low-energy form to supplement life of smartwatches, which offers all the features of Bluetooth but on a low power levels, which negates the need to add big size batteries on these small devices. All this leads to the technology being cost-effective and affordable for end consumers. This is why wearable Tech in India can be a huge success.