Wearable tech ready to grow up?

Will wearable technology ever gain a foothold beyond tech-savvy early adopters? The answer might seem to be no, given that the perhaps most well-known piece of wearable tech—Google Glass—has seen its release pushed out time and again. The delays have prompted Will Oremus, writing in Slate to suggest that Google turn the Glass technology over to a company that specializes in enterprise applications—not consumer products.

But other observers, writing in the New York Times “Room for Debate” section, have different takes. Bridget Carey, a senior editor at CNET, says that right now, wearables are going through their “awkward teenage years,” where many devices “collect data and bombard us with alerts.”

She adds, “To make wearable tech truly compelling, we don’t need more data. We need smarter interpretation of data—sourced from multiple devices or apps.”

Cary says that although Google Glass and Apple Watch get a lot of attention, it’s health wearables that are on the right track, with step counters evolving into smart watches that can provide real-time feedback.

Ben Bajarin, a principal analyst at Creative Strategies, agrees that we are in the early stages of the wearables product category. He adds that “for wearables to truly take off, they need to disappear and become embedded into the apparel we already wear”—including sensors in our shoes to count steps and in our shirts monitor heart rate. In this he echoes cellphone pioneer Martin Cooper who wants to see cellphones disassembled, with sensors distributed across the body. Bajarin says semiconductor technology will enable sensor proliferation.

Approaching wearable technology from a fashion perspective is Eva Chen, editor of Lucky magazine. Fashion isn’t the issue, she says, despite claims that women won’t embrace wearable tech because the devices are too big. Michael Kors, she says, built a women’s-wear empire around men’s-inspired watches with large case sizes. But if wearable tech doesn’t improve, streamline, or organize your line in “some unexpectedly brilliant way,” she says, it doesn’t matter what it looks like. She has hope for a next-generation of wearables resulting from collaborations between, for example, Diane von Furstenberg and Google. Such wearables, she says, will “balance elegant form with functionality that you just can’t live without.”

Pierre Theodore, a lung surgeon at the University of California San Francisco, notes that wearables for consumers can track activity and measure heart rate as well as blood oxygen and glucose levels. But he is primarily interested in the “other end of the stethoscope”—whether doctors will adopt wearables to help in the practice of medicine. Smart glasses, he says, will require “considerable evolution…to withstand the demands of hospital use. However, the promise of hands-free access to content and open communication lines to allow improved patient care are big reasons for excitement and continued exploration.”