Apple made its long-awaited wearable announcement today at a special event in Cupertino, as well as showing off the iPhone 6 and the new, larger iPhone 6 plus. As expected, Apple put a significant focus on fitness and wellness for the wristworn device, which is actually called Apple Watch not iWatch. The Apple Watch did not emerge as the advanced-sensing health device some envisioned. The device...
As Apple gets ready for its long-awaited wearable device announcement later today, a couple of other wearables in the fitness tracking space are following the Apple model of vaguely hinting about upcoming releases. Intel teased the new Basis Band at the Intel Developer Forum this morning, Jawbone has been leaking hints to the press about a new, more open ecosystem, Misfit Wearables released a...
Samsung's Gear Fit.
As Apple gears up to launch its much-rumored wearable device, new data shows 60 percent of likely adopters of wearable technology want to use their device for health or fitness, according to a survey of 1,000 consumers by ON World.
The report also looked at shipments of wireless personal area devices, a category which includes smartwatches, smart jewelry, pet and child...
Late last week the Financial Times (sub. req.) reported that Apple had modified its iOS developer license agreement, its rules for developers that create apps for its devices, to ban developers from selling health data collected by HealthKit.
The company wrote that developers must “not sell an end-user’s health information collected through the HealthKit API to advertising platforms, data brokers...
Fresh off its $2.4 million crowdfunding campaigning for sleep tracking, bedside orb, Sense, San Francisco-based startup Hello has announced $10.5 million in backing from a group of angel investors. The Wall Street Journal reports the investors include former PayPal head David Marcus, Facebook executive Dan Rose, former Facebook designer Aaron Sittig, Spotify advisor Shakil Khan, and Hugo Barra, a...
Apple has been granted a patent, filed originally in July 2011, for a wrist-worn iWatch device, giving a new peek into some possible features of the much-hyped device rumored to be launching in October. However, on the subject of healthcare or wellness tracking as a focus for the device, the document is silent. AppleInsider originally spotted the document.
The patent refers to the device as "...
According to a recent report from ON World, in the next fives years an estimated 700 million wearable technology devices will ship worldwide, which will make for a $47.4 billion market. The research firm predicts that hardware sales will continue to dominate revenues for the next five years but monitoring services, apps, and subscriptions will have faster growth rates.
“Over the past two years,...
Misfit, formerly Misfit Wearables, the maker of the jewelry-like Shine activity tracker, has partnered with smartwatch-maker Pebble to integrate its algorithms into that company's device. According to a Misfit spokesperson, the deal marks the deepest integration to date for Misfit, which also plans to make an open API available to partners in the future.
The Misfit Pebble app, which runs on the...
Apple has filed for a handful of new patents related to biometric sensing and tracking, according to a report over at AppleInsider. One of the patents the company filed for, "Method and apparatus for personal characterization data collection using sensors", describes a system that uses data collected by smartphone sensors (accelerometers, gyroscopes, location sensors) and data collected by...
At Apple's WWDC event earlier this month, the company finally announced its HealthKit and Health offerings, which will bring health tracking natively to the next generation of iOS. But there was no mention of Apple's long-rumored iWatch at WWDC. Now Nikkei Asian Review, a Japanese publication with a history of reporting Apple's release dates before they are announced officially, says Apple is...
