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Are Wearables The Next Big Thing in 2014?

 

A new hype appear in town, technology that is wearable. New watches, glasses, wristbands and other sensors will be flooding the market in 2014. With companies such as Fitbit Jawbone, Pebble and Nike+, other startups seem to be flooding the industry with the potentials profit in sights.

Forecasted by Canalys, the wearables market will grow from over 17 million in the beginning of 2014 to over 45 million by 2017. With segmented prices of $70 to $200, wearable will be lading the Internet of Things revolution in 2014. Larger companies such as Apple, LG and Samsung will help with this push by putting out their new watches Nevertheless new iterations of the Fitbit, Withings and Nike+ will make the wearables transform the market of sports, fitness, and health segments this year.

With the emergence of Bluetooth Low Energy (4.0) by Apple and the iBeacons (Android 4.4) most brands can connect their watches with smart phones quite simply. Smartphones seem to be the main controlling device for the IoT market in the future.

The fragmentation of new apps and gadgets will most likely ruin the experience of people trying to connect devices among each other. This is why thethings.iO is preparing the dashboard as a tool to inter-connect all of your gadgets. We are creating a transparent tool to allow people to connect, interact and manage their gadgets, glasses, bands, and watches with a great user experience.

Join thethings.IO to get access at the BETA dashboard and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday blog!

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One App For Each Gadget? No Way! This Is Not The Internet of Things We Want

When we envision the future of the Internet of Things, we see this scenario that Apple and Google helped to build with their mobile devices and their application market. We see tons of gadgets and objects connected to the Internet each one (or even brand) managed through their mobile application.

Dozens of IoT mobile apps (Photo by: Gonzalo Baeza)

Dozens of IoT mobile apps (Photo by: Gonzalo Baeza)

Philips Hue and LIFX are both household light bulbs and both are compatible with the analogical light bulbs that we have at home. However, both require the user to download separate apps to control their own device, this doesn’t make any sense.

Philips HUE and LIFX

Philips HUE and LIFX

People love to monitor their health by using scales but now with the invention of wearable trackers such as Fitbit or Nike+ people are able to also monitor their physical activity throughout the day. There are scales such as the Withings scale but this is not compatable with the Fitbit or the Nike+. We feel as if technology should make watching our health more convenient, not more difficult.

Our solution

We believe that the users of these millions of gadgets do not want to use dozens of mobile apps to interact with their devices. We propose a central place where they are able to aggregate, manage and interact in real-time with all of the devices.

We want to provide a platform where all of the Internet of Things in our market are interoperable and end users do not need to deal with different mobile apps.

Stay tunned and  don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday blog!