Wearable tech could eliminate need for smartphones: exec

Wearable devices could replace everything in our pockets, eventually wiping out smartphones in five to 10 years, says one wearable-technology company CEO. However, others say functionality, design and comfort are among the issues that make that prediction unlikely. Many wearables, such as smartwatches, rely on smartphones for functions such as connecting to the Internet and collecting user data. However, Gabe Grifoni, CEO of Rufus Labs, said in a phone interview that in future years we could move away from that requirement and wearables could be produced that function as standalone devices, eliminating the need for smartphones altogether. “We should remove smartphones, then wallets and keys from our pockets,” he said. Grifoni's company, based in Los Angeles, produces a wearable called the Rufus Cuff, which functions similarly to a smartwatch — though he won't call it that — and has the capability of working as an independent device on WiFi. “A full operating system, a larger battery, the different form factor, those are some of the bigger things that are different about the Rufus Cuff. … We stray a little bit from calling it a smartwatch because of the form factor and what it does,” Grifoni said. Grifoni said the Rufus Cuff battery “is about three to five times the size of most wearable wrist devices,” giving it more power, a longer charge life and the capability of being an important piece of technology that functions separate from a smartphone. But a bigger battery size resulting in a larger smartwatch is one reason why it's unlikely smartwatches will make smartphones obsolete, said Duncan Stewart, director of research for technology in Canada for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd. Stewart said smartwatches' batteries currently only have enough power to last on a cell network for about an hour or less with normal use. As for making the batteries bigger, he said in a phone interview: “People are already suggesting that the current level of wrist mounted devices is a little on the thick side.” He said giving a smartwatch the full capabilities of a phone is difficult because it requires additional features like a radio chip and a connection to a wide area network (WAN), and doing this would add costs to production and is complicated for developers. For Stewart the idea of wearables taking over the role of smartphones in the future is “a compelling idea,” but data shows the smartphones are still in high demand. Stewart's company has predicted that 1.4 billion smartphones will be sold worldwide this year, and a record one billion of those sales will be upgrades. He said wearables do not yet represent a "significant fraction of that market” for electronics, with sales this year for smartwatches and head-mounted wearables expected to come in "somewhere between 90 and 99 per cent smaller than the value of things like smartphones, PCs, TV sets and tablets." Neptune is a Montreal-based wearable-tech company that has released a wristband that acts as a standalone primary device and has the capabilities of acting like a smartphone. But its CEO, Simon Tian, said in a phone interview there is value in having the experience of using a smartphone to be able to do certain things that a smartwatch isn’t convenient for, such as accessing banking information, streaming a video or browsing the Internet. “I don’t see the pocket device being replaced by another device in the next five to 10 years,” Tian said. “The parallel I like to draw is the rise of smartphones; although it's been very quick and impressive, it hasn’t replaced the larger-form factors. People are still using desktops and laptops because the reality is there are certain things that the smartphone just can’t do. Like you can’t write a 200-word essay on your phone.” Tom Emrich, a Toronto-based tech consultant specializing in wearables, said in a phone interview that even if a smartwatch could function as a standalone device, the comfort level wouldn’t be as high because consumers would have to be “holding up one arm in the same position” for an extended period of time to keep using the device. Emrich said "augmented reality" devices, such as smart glasses, are more likely than smartwatches to prompt the phasing out of smartphones. “When the smartphone goes away is when augmented reality becomes ubiquitous," he said. "We may not even need a smartwatch because the screen is our eyes. We may start seeing augmented reality in glasses and heads-up displays taking the need to have a smartphone away, and that’s when voice recognition needs to get better too because that’s the big dependency.” Emrich said such a development will not happen for several years, and acknowledged that some smartphone tasks are being taken over by watches. “I can safely say that in five years we’re still going to have smartphones," he said. "Are we going to be as dependent on the smartphone? Probably not. We’re already seeing some changes on the Android Wear and Apple Watch side which allow us to leave our home and still access notifications for emails and other WiFi connected communications.” — With reporting by Shruti Shekar at sshekar@thewirereport.ca and editing by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca

Wearable tech could eliminate need for smartphones: exec

Broadcast | July 14, 2015

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