Wearables Competitive Landscape 2015 (18 pages)

Last Modified: July 27, 2015 6:36 AM

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Wearables Competitive Landscape 2015July 27, 2015

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Table of Contents

What is the scope of competition? 3

Samsung 3

Android Wear 3

Apple 4

Google Glass 5

Fitbit 5

Microsoft 6

Jawbone 6

Nike 7

Adidas 7

Garmin 8

Pebble 8

Small Players 9

Digitsole 9

Skully 9

Oxie 10

Fitbit 11

Apple 11

Android Wear 11

Who is having success? 11

What are 5 killer fitness apps? 12

Nike+ Running for Apple 12

Hello Heart for Apple 12

FitStar Yoga for Apple 12

Google Fit for Android 12

Ingress for Android 13

What are 5 more killer wearable apps? 14

Golfshot for Android 14

PixtoCam for Android 14

Huebble for Pebble 14

Empatica Epilepsy Watch 14

GoPro for Apple 15

What are the existing ‘digital fabric’ market comps? 16

Hypercolor by Generra 16

Nike Dri Fit 16

Lululemon 16

Under Armour 17

Who is at the cutting edge? 18

Levi’s x Google: Project Jacquard 18

Google: Project Soli 18



The wearables market leading into 2016 is dominat-ed by wrist devices. Our analysis will focus on these devices while referencing several devices that are on the fringe of this competitive space. There are sever-al small pockets of highly forward-thinking products with an undetermined success rate to date. This is largely due to the infancy of the marketplace and the short time in the market. The Oculus VR, for example, does not currently have much mass-market commer-cial penetration, nor does it offer applications for the everyday person. The watch sector, in contrast, has been successfully proven over the last decade.

There are many players in the space. The primary dif-ferentiators between products are operating system and wearable form factor. Most watch products offer standard data capture and GPS features, with sever products entering into the personal computing are-na. For example, the Android watches give text and call ability, as does the Apple Watch.

SamsungFEATURE AVAILABLE

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Text

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Heart Rate

Apps

Wifi

Cloud Sync

3G / 4G

Camera

GPS

With 1.2 million units sold in 2014, Samsung Gear rep-resents a large player in the space. The Samsung wear-able devices have a very similar feature set to Android Wear devices. Unlike Android wear, Samsung Gear uses the Tizen

OS.1 This is a surprising departure as Samsung has al-ways heavily relied on the Android platform.

Samsung GearFit

Samsung GearS

Android WearFEATURE AVAILABLE

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1 http://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-galaxy-gear-update-swaps-android-for-tizen/

What is the scope of competition?



FEATURE AVAILABLE

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Heart Rate

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GPS

Android leads the watch sector in terms of breadth of manufacturers. They have several vendors on board, namely Asus, Motorola, Huawei and LG.

Motorola Moto 360

As expected, Android watches take advantage of a simplified Android operating system. This includes the ability to text, call and email. In addition, access to heart rate data is also accessible from the watch. These watches sync data to the cloud via Google’s core service offerings like Hangout, Gmail, etc.

While benchmarking the segment, Android watch sales were a drop in the bucket compared to the launch of the Apple Watch.2 LET

AppleFEATURE AVAILABLE

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Heart Rate

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Apple launched the Apple Watch in early 2015 to much fanfare. Sales have been very strong, estimated to reach $35M+ in 2015.3

2 http://www.techradar.com/us/news/wearables/apple-watch-sales-1290701

3 http://247wallst.com/consumer-electronics/2015/05/26/can-ap-ple-watch-sales-reach-40-million/



Apple’s watch is offers much the same feature set of the Android watches, albeit with their always closed, proprietary OS. While the open Android platform has grown the segment greatly, Apple hopes to capitalize on its seamless integration into the OSX operating sys-tem and sync capability with iTunes and related Mac applications.

Google GlassFEATURE AVAILABLE

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Heart Rate

Apps

Wifi

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3G / 4G

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GPS

Google Glass is one of the few wearable devices that spans the spectrum between computer, heads up dis-play, and standard wearable device. Released in Feb-ruary of 2013, the product has since been shuttered.4

Google Glass

It is unclear if Google Glass will continue on in some form in the future.

FitbitFEATURE AVAILABLE

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Heart Rate

Apps

Wifi

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3G / 4G

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GPS

4 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-ends-sales-of-google-glass-2015-1



While Samsung, Android Wear and Apple have a sharp focus on wearble computing, Fitbit focuses more on the health and wellness segment.

Fitbit Zip

Fitbit Surge

With gross sales for 2015 projected near $1B, Fitbit dominates the wellness and activity space.5 Together with their recent announcement of a $100M IPO, Fitbit looks to continue their success in the health and well-ness space.6

Fitbit’s devices use a proprietary OS, then publish data to their tracking application. The stark simplicity of the devices and applications seems to have served them well.

5 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-ask/fitbit-ipo-the-road-ahead_b_7257706.html

6 http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fitbit-wearable-tech-files-for-100-million-ipo/

MicrosoftFEATURE AVAILABLE

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Heart Rate

Apps

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3G / 4G

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New for 2015 is the Microsoft Band. Microsoft seems to be having real success with its Band device. It is not clear how strong sales have been, but reviews have been positive.

JawboneFEATURE AVAILABLE

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FEATURE AVAILABLE

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Heart Rate

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Jawbone and Nike are said to tail Fitbit in sales by a distant margin. Jawbone is more simple than both the Fitbit and Nike devices, and could be considered a glorfied motion capture device.

Jawbone UP

Jawbone continues to release new products, with their latest being the “UP3 Tracker.”

NikeFEATURE AVAILABLE

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Heart Rate

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Nike is one of the more interesting case studies in the group. Despite dominating the market in 2013

with $33M in sales, Nike shuttered the popular Fuel-Band program in 2014.7

Nike FuelBand

Nike GPS Watch

It remains to be seen what Nike’s next wearable tech-nology initatives wiil contain, or when this next initia-tive will happen.

AdidasFEATURE AVAILABLE

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Heart Rate

Apps

7 http://www.cnet.com/news/fuelband-layoffs-nike-signals-it-was-not-and-never-will-be-tech-company/



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Adidas has also entered the fitness tracker wearables space. First with their upmarket Run Smart watch, then again in mid-2014 with their Fit Smart band.

Adidas Run Smart

Adidas Fit Smart

It remains to be seen what Adidas’ level of success will be.

GarminFEATURE AVAILABLE

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Heart Rate

Apps

Wifi

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3G / 4G

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GPS

Garmin is an interesting entry into the smart wear-ables segment. Garmin first began with GPS equip-ment for cars and gradually made an entry into the handheld GPS market.

Garmin 620



Garmin vivoactive

Garmin has continued using GPS as it’s core product promise with it’s new activity monitors. These devic-es are marketed more at the ‘outdoor’ segment. Us-ers can also download GPS data from golf courses.

PebbleFEATURE AVAILABLE

Call

Text

Email

Heart Rate

Apps

Wifi

Cloud Sync

3G / 4G

Camera

GPS

Pebble claims to have sold over 1M smartwatches to date.8 Pebble’s key differentiator is app and external device integration. For example, using the Pebble de-vice to trigger external devices like a camera.

Pebble Time

8 http://www.cnbc.com/id/102389470

Pebble Steel

Pebble continues to recieve positive reviews on Am-azon.

Small PlayersSome of the small players in the space are doing very intersting things.

DigitsoleDigitsole launched on KickStarter in September of 2014. The Digitsole acts as both a remote foot warm-er and pedometer.

SkullySkully is a ‘heads up display’ (HUD) for motorcycle riders. Similar to Google Glass, it can project help-ful information like a back-up or blind-spot cam-era on a small crystal screen inside the helmet.



OxieOxie is a wearable air purifier.



FitbitThe breakout in the activity monitoring category is clearly Fitbit.

Fitbit Surge

With gross sales for 2015 projected near $1B, Fitbit dominates the wellness and activity space.9 Together with their recent announcement of a $100M IPO, Fit-bit looks to continue their success in the health and wellness space.10

AppleThe clear winner in the smartwatch category is the Apple Watch. Nothing even comes close. Apple al-legedly sold more in one day than Android Wear sold in all of 2014.11

Given the success of it’s handheld devices like iPhone

9 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-ask/fitbit-ipo-the-road-ahead_b_7257706.html

10 http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fitbit-wearable-tech-files-for-100-million-ipo/

11 http://www.techradar.com/us/news/wearables/apple-watch-sales-1290701

and its tablets, Apple is sure to continue it’s dominat-ing performance.

However, there remains a very large Android customer base that could first consider other smartwatch plat-forms before Apple.

Android WearAndroid Wear seems to be following the strategy that grew Android to where it is currently, as a world lead-ing mobile OS.

The Android platform will always be an attractive op-tion for device manufacturers. They have several ven-dors on board, namely Asus, Motorola, Huawei and LG.

Who is having success?



The fitness and health/wellness segments are natural fits for wearable technology. While wearable technolo-gy is in its infancy, we expect to see great innovation in the years to come.

Here are some standout fitness wearable apps.

Nike+ Running for AppleThe beauty of the Nike+ Running app is simplicity. Primarily a pace tracker, the app also includes social features and integration with Nike’s other fitness apps.

It would seem that with the advent of high-perfor-mance smart watches, Nike has decided to utilize these devices as opposed to building their own.

Hello Heart for AppleHello Heart is a simple heart monitor, data history repository, and health coach.

FitStar Yoga for AppleFitStar Yoga is a personal yoga coach in your wear-able device. It uses the device’s motion sensor to judge the quality of your positions.

Google Fit for AndroidGoogle Fit is a general fitness and activity app that encourages users to be more active.

What are 5 killer fitness apps?



Ingress for AndroidWhile not explicitly a fitness app, Ingress might be the coolest activity app on the market.

The gameplay consists of establishing “portals” at places of cultural significance, such as public art, landmarks, monuments, etc., and linking them to create virtual triangular “control fields” over geo-graphical areas. Progress in the game is measured by the number of “mind units” (MUs) captured via such control fields, i.e. people nominally controlled by each faction.1

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_%28game%29



Golfshot for AndroidGolfshot for Android is a solid real-world example of a wearable device in the wild, with a large address-ible market.

Golfshot uses GPS and exisitng golf course data to give precise context to every golf shot at selected courses.

PixtoCam for AndroidSurveillance and security will be a huge theme for the rest of the century, it seems. PixtoCam is a simple remote control application between smartwatch and any Android camera.

Huebble for PebbleThe integration of environmental devices and a smartwatch is a natural fit. While this is not incredibly compelling, it could be a great addition in the service or retail industries.

Empatica Epilepsy WatchThis is one watch that can have fantastic real world implications. The Embrace watch can detect seizures and alert caregivers of a seizure event.

What are 5 more killer wearable apps?



GoPro for AppleIn less than ten years, GoPro has revolutionized per-sonal video. It’s only natural that you can now control your GoPro from a smartwach.



Hypercolor by GenerraHypercolor was manufactured by Generra Sports-wear Company of Seattle and marketed in the United States as Generra Hypercolor or Generra Hypergrafix and elsewhere as Global Hypercolor. They contained a thermochromic pigment made by Matsui Shikiso Chemical of Japan, that changed between two colors – one when cold, one when warm. The shirts were produced with several color change choices begin-ning in 1991. Between February and May 1991 they sold $50 million in Hypercolor garments.1

Nike Dri FitNike Dri Fit has seen tremendous success since its in-troduction in 2009. It is unclear the total overall sales of the Dri Fit line, however the Dri Fit fabric has found its way deep into their apparel lines.

Dri Fit ‘technology’ has replaced their more tradition-al fabrics almost entirely.

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercolor

LululemonLululemon has grown into a bona fide $Billion com-pany. They have a suite of tech fabrics:

LuonLuxtremeSwiftSilverescent

What are the existing ‘digital fabric’ market comps?



Under ArmourUnder Armour has also seen incredible success in the fitness market. With sales of $3B in 2014, they are a giant in the space.

Like lululemon, they have a suite of tech fabrics:

- Coldgear- Coldgear Infrared- Storm- Charged Cotton- Heatgear



While the wearables space is still in its infancy, we are already starting to see cuting-edge innovation and cre-ativity at the bleeding edge of the segment.

Levi’s x Google: Project JacquardGoogle has been working with Levi’s on developing a gesture sensitve fabric, called Project Jacquard. The technology turns ordinary fabric into a touchpad.

Google: Project SoliWith project Soli, Google is developing a sort of ‘ra-dar’ system to interpret hand gestures. One can

imagine the wide range of potential applications for something like this in the smartwatch category.

Who is at the cutting edge?


Wearables Competitive Landscape 2015 (18 pages)

Technology

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