Wearables

From biometric shirts to ‘tattoo’ touchpads, the wearables space is going through an overhaul.

- Nidhi Singal

"Nice shirt." 

You're pleased. "Hey, thanks." 

"Looks comfortable?" he says, handing over his business card. And waits for you to reciprocate. You ask for his phone instead. He is nonplussed. You tap it on the left cuff of your shirt, and hand back the phone. Your business card is on his phone screen. He looks up in surprise. 

"It is also very smart," you say in explanation. His surprise doesn't go away.

This is, of course, an imaginary conversation, but one that would well be playing out in meeting rooms, where people sport a new smart shirt brought out by Arrow. The shirt's left cuff has an NFC tag, and combined with an app on the smartphone, enables others with NFC-enabled smartphones to receive a host of information from you, including your business card, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. The cuff also does a range of other stuff, including storing and playing songs, activating meeting mode in your phone and connecting to Bluetooth devices. The shirt is an evolved form of a wearable gadget, commonly known by the appellation 'wearables' - a category that is growing both in terms of development of technology as well as enduse gadgets.

In the not-so-distant-future, analysts believe wearables will be in the realms of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), in the form of headsets and glasses, for consumers and businesses/ enterprises. For consumer use, cardboard style VR and AR headsets (with an opening for camera) will take centre stage, whereas glasses like Google Glass and alternatives to Microsoft's Hololens are being worked on for enterprise use. Head-mounted displays that sold only 0.14 million units for 2015, are expected to sell 1.43 million units in 2016.