Monday, December 28, 2015

Many smartphones and wearables under the Christmas tree – This … – Central German newspaper

Rosalind Picard wears a bracelet that is to check the state of health.

(Photo: REUTERS)

What were the most popular electric Christmas presents this year? What technological developments can we expect and where does the future hold? We provide some answers.

Berlin .

Smart Phones and portable electronics are in this year’s hit with electronic devices. We explain that the great period of the so-called wearables is yet to come – while emotions of users play a decisive role.

How went the holiday shopping season?

This year, smartphones were in vast quantities under the Christmas tree. They are in many industrialized countries in the top five of the most popular gifts. And the holiday shopping season is not over yet. Until the second week of January into Vouchers can be redeemed, and with free money hardware is purchased.

Is there besides smartphones other popular devices?

 The Sports Watch SportBand of Misfit. The watch manufacturer Fossil buys the fitness tracker experts Misfit.

The sports watch “SportBand” of Misfit. The watch maker Fossil buys the fitness tracker experts Misfit. (Photo: Misfit / dpa)

The so-called wearables bring massively. This is on one hand to Smart Watches. The biggest market are currently but fitness trackers that are used during exercise and record heart rate and other body and interpret data. The market research company Gartner expects that doubled this year, sales of fitness bracelets in the United States – much of it is sold in the Christmas shop. In Germany, the momentum is not quite as strong.

What kind of orders of magnitude The market researchers attribute?

The experts agree that the smart phone market continues to grow rapidly. Market researchers from the US company Gartner expect a worldwide sales increase of 14 percent to nearly 1.4 billion units this year. The wearables an increase of one-third to 265 million units is expected. Rising. It will also see the analyst International Data Corporation (IDC). They predict for the next five years an average annual growth of 28 percent

This means:. Electronic devices that are worn on the body, sit by as a new mass-market products. Gartner expects global sales of 580 million units for the 2020th The wearable market is then about twice as large as the market with personal computers. Already in 2018, a typical user would have in an industrialized country for more than three personal electronic devices.

How the devices are technically develop?

drivers for the growing paragraph is the greater efficiency. This means first of all quite banal: longer battery life. The devices will have their own mobile connections, and more and more sensors to analyze physiological data. The units are equipped with payment functions, to acquire approximately online apps, but to also pay the bill in the restaurant with the clever clock.

At the same time, the product range is among the fitness Bracelets differentiate. There will be devices for children and seniors. There will be bracelets, which are specialized for healthcare applications – for example for the chronically ill. Also as for retail employees are special application possibilities are conceivable, aimed at supervision of the personnel

The latter shows that a question comes into focus:. How is handled with the data incurred? In the words of Gartner analyst Annette Zimmermann, a high level of transparency will be required on the handling of information collected in order to enforce the new applications.

What will be the next step?

With more sensors and more better software will make it possible to analyze emotions of users. These include not only heart rate, blood pressure or sleep patterns, but also the facial expression or speech. This allows the state of the sick diagnose more accurately.

The algorithms but can also be used by companies to find out how high the stress level of employees in certain situations. The interaction with customers can be recorded and evaluated in order to improve communication. Experts expect that in the computer trade fair CES (January 6 to 9) much new software and hardware is presented for wearables.

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