Wearable Devices: The Next Battleground For The Platform Wars

Apr 17

Forrester Blogs – Senior Analyst Sarah Rotman Epps writes: Wearable devices, or “wearables” for short, have enormous potential for uses in health and fitness, navigation, social networking, commerce, and media. Imagine video games that happen in real space. Or glasses that remind you of your colleague’s name that you really should know. Or paying for a coffee at Starbucks with your watch instead of your phone. Wearables will transform our lives in numerous ways, trivial and substantial, that we are just starting to imagine.

In a new Forrester report out [on 04/17/2012], we argue that wearables will move mainstream once they get serious investment from the “big five” platforms — Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook — and their developer communities, and we give advice to product strategists who want to stay ahead of the wearables curve. Key takeaways:

Wearables are here, and more innovation is coming. We’ve all seen the movies: Gadget-laden heroes from James Bond to the Terminator to Iron Man have long relied on voice-controlled watches and heads-up display glasses to extend their powers. Now, those gadgets are a reality, albeit a niche one. [...]

Wearables need backing from the big five platforms to succeed. Wearables without software are just geeky hardware. The big five software platforms — Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook – each have strengths to bring to wearables. [...]

Wearables will heighten the platform wars — and Google may actually win. [...] Google’s open Android platform will inspire broader experimentation for entire wearable solutions. [...]

Product strategists who want to stay ahead of the curve should take a cue from companies like Intuit and experiment with wearables now, especially if you’re in an industry that will be disrupted by wearables, including apparel, software, media, gaming, and commerce.

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Andy's Wearable Computing Notebook