Beyond Apple Watch: What's Next In Wearables

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(Image: Becky Stern via Flickr)

The Apple watch is here. It actually doesn't look all that different or work too differently from the iPhone. They're companion devices, so that's fine. But the future of wearables isn't in making companion devices of existing technology. There's a whole range of form factors waiting to come out.

The key is the decreasing price of connectivity and sensors. Gartner predicted that sensors and LEDs (and, of course, processing) are going to be the biggest growth segments of the IoT. By 2020, they expect small processors to be priced as low as $1, which makes it economically and technologically feasible to make anything "smart."

When you can put sensors and processors in something as cheap as a t-shirt, you've got a whole new world of wearables. It also makes the idea of smart watches, which are general fitness trackers with some phone accessories, seem really expensive. We will soon see other types of fitness trackers, healthcare sensors, and other "quantified life" products, overtake smart watches.

Virtual reality is another new frontier of wearables. As major companies, including Facebook, Sony, and Microsoft, get into one form of VR or another, wearables (not just helmets but wearable computers as accessories to those helmets) will enter the workplace for augmented reality and for training. Consumer trends such as gaming and marketing will likely drive VR as well.

The next wave of wearables is where the real action is. We might even see the first generation of implanted devices or, at the very least, bio-enhanced devices like smart tattoos.

So what will we see first? Hard to tell. Here is our list of the eight most likely candidates for the next wave of hot wearables. Check them out on the following pages, and then tell us in the comments section below which ones are most interesting to you--and what kind of wearables you'd like to see in the future.

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