En Chine, les wearable devices misent sur la santé et les expériences sensorielles

Alors que le marché chinois s’apprête à connaître une forte croissance des wearable devices, les consommateurs chinois devraient principalement se tourner vers des fonctionalités et expériences relatives à la santé.

En 2015, le marché chinois de wearable devices atteindra une valeur de plus de 2,6 milliard de yuan, selon un récent rapport de Frost&Sullivan. Les spécialistes s’accordent à dire que les consommateurs chinois, aujourd’hui adeptes de smartphones ne vont pas tarder à s’emparer de ces objets intelligents portatifs. Mais comment adapter ses produits aux besoins et aux usages spécifiques de ce marché croissant ?  MassThinker, un cabinet de conseil chinois en créativité  donne quelques pistes intéressantes à travers les 6 tendances clés qui devraient s’imposer prochainement en Chine dans le domaine du wearable devices. La santé et le développement des capacités sensorielles devraient particulièrement se démarquer dans les années à venir.

Les multiples rôles des wearable devices

Tout d’abord, les appareils médicaux portables devraient passer d’une mode massive à une mode active, c’est-à-dire, ne plus contenter d’afficher les résultats de diagnostics mais proposer également des conseils pratiques à leurs utilisateurs. De la même manière, les objets connectés axés sur l’amélioration de la santé psychologique auront beaucoup à gagner en Chine.  En plus d’endosser le rôle du médecin de famille, les wearable devices se verront davantage attribués les tâches d’un gestionnaire personnel, qui analyse, identifie et mémorise les préférences de leurs propriétaires afin de les guider dans de diverses activités : les achats, le sport ou encore les tâches ménagères. De même, les wearable devices devront être capables de garantir la confidentialité des données collectées. Et pourquoi pas d’assurer également la sécurité physique de leur propriétaire, à l’instar d’un garde du corps qui alerte d‘un danger imminent aux alentours.

Sensoriel, social et divertissant

La quatrième tendance repérée par Mass Thinker est l’extension des capacités sensorielles. En effet, si les lunettes de Google ont enrichi l’expérience d’un point de vue visuel, les objets connectés du futur devront peut-être permettre aux mains et aux pieds d’accomplir les tâches qu’ils ne peuvent pas réaliser jusqu’à ici. Autre  piste intéressante :les technologies telles que la réalité augmentée font des wearable devices un excellent outil de divertissement. Ainsi, les utilisateurs pourront très prochainement expérimenter les jeux virtuels quand et où ils veulent. En dernier lieu, les objets connectés aideront à renforcer les liens sociaux, en permettant aux gens de communiquer avec leurs proches ou certains objets. Un autre média social en devenir donc.

Source : L'Atelier

Google, Nike, Jawbone and the fight to win wearable computing

Jawbone's Up wrist monitor

(Credit: Jawbone)

When wireless headset company Jawbone announced plans Tuesday to buy wearable sensor maker BodyMedia for what a source said was more than $100 million, it may well have marked a turning point for wearable computing.

The technology, which includes everything from Google Glass eyewear to heart-rate monitors to sensors that slip into running shoes, has come of age. It's moving past the niche gizmos that only appeal to geeks and gearheads.

As a real business materializes around the technology, a battle is brewing among companies that want to put themselves at the heart of it, and profit from its growth.

It's the age-old story of tech -- companies want to control the application standards on which developers build. In the 1990s, Microsoft won the platform war against IBM and became the powerhouse of the PC era. Google's Android mobile operating system is racing ahead of Apple's iOS in the platform battle for mobile dominance.

There's a reason winning the platform wars is so key. Developers have limited resources and often find themselves too stretched to create applications for more than one or two platforms. So often, they focus on the biggest. That, in turn, helps boost the platform, which then is in a stronger position to win over more developers. It becomes a virtuous cycle.

Wearable computing may never become the massive global business that PCs and mobile devices are now. But it's already caught the attention of Google, which is pushing its Google Glass. It's unclear what products might emerge using the technology. But Google's heft alone is enough to lure developers to its technology. And last month, giant Silicon Valley venture capital firms, Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, as well as Google's own Google Ventures, formed an investment syndicate to seed startups creating Google's Glass products.

A handful of other companies are staking their own claim as well to a wearable technology platforming, focusing on the health and fitness market that's become the biggest piece of the business.

"There is a little bit of a platform war going on," said Robin Thurston, chief executive and co-founder of MapMyFitness, a health and fitness service where athletes can log their runs and bike rides.

It's not a full-on combat just yet. MapMyFitness is developing its own platform to which some 400 devices connect, uploading various health and fitness data. But the company is also one of 10 app makers partnering with Jawbone on its Up platform, announced Tuesday, that also hopes to be attract developers.

Right now, much of the data collected from wrist monitors such as Jawbone's Up, as well as heart-rate monitors, sleep-pattern sensing devices, bicycling cyclometers and more exist in digital silos. It's not easy to look at the different collections of data at the same time to determine, for example, if a series of poor running performances might have been related to several nights of fitful sleep.

"At the end of the day, you want to see how one pattern links to another pattern," said Travis Bogard, Jawbone's vice president of product management and strategy.

Wearable tech gets in the game (pictures)

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That's the point of Jawbone's platform. The company also inked deals with MapMyFitness rival Runkeeper, and with Withings, which makes digital scales that send weight data wireless to PCs, among others.

"We wanted to create showcases to get developers interested," Bogard said.

And then there's Nike. The shoe and apparel giant has been pushing into consumer electronics since the 2006 introduction of its Nike+ technology, which began with a sensor that runners could slip into their shoes to track performance. It's Nike+ FuelBand, unveiled a little more than a year ago, competes with Up, monitoring the steps and calories burned by users.

Nike+ FuelBand

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

In December, the company made its own bid for developers, launching a program to offer money and mentoring to companies interested in creating health and fitness apps on top of Nike+. In March,the company awarded 10 startups $20,000 each to work from Portland, Ore., for three months to build those apps.

"We want to work with partners that have the same vision we have for health and fitness," said Nike spokesman Joseph Teegardin.

The platform battle is still young. And many of the companies vying for their spot in the center of the emerging market work with one another. But the competition suggests that wearable computing is moving from being merely a novelty, niche business.

"This is the beginning of an entirely new ecosystem of applications that will exist on top of your wearables," Jennifer Darmour, a user experience designer for the Seattle design firm Artefact and author of the Electricfoxy blog. "And that is a pretty solid indication that wearable tech is here to stay."

Source : http://news.cnet.com/, Jay Greene  May 2, 2013