W|W: The Wearable Weekly – The Apple Watch is winning

Welcome to The Wearable Weekly, your trusted guide to all things wearable tech. If you only have time to read one thing about wearables this week, this is it.

Industry Highlights

Did the Apple Watch cause traditional timepiece sales to tumble? Bloomberg recently published stats from a report which suggested that the watch space’s biggest drop in sales since 2008, which occurred in June, could be related to the release of Apple Watch.

Is wearable technology putting professional athletes under a microscope? This was the question posed in The Guardian this week as CFL’s Brian Bulcke talked openly about the concerns he sees with the use of wearables to monitor the performance of athletes in professional sports.

Has wearable tech hit the “trough of disillusionment?” According to a new report from Dx3, wearables have rolled a little past the peak of inflated expectations in Gartner’s Hype Cycle and is expected to slide even further down this peak towards the trough of disillusionment.

Statistics & Forecast

Retailers sold $375 million worth of watches during the month, 11 percent less than in June 2014, according to data from NDP Group, which is being correlated to the Apple Watch launch (Bloomberg)

Conductive ink market reaches $2.8 Billion in 2020, says report from IDTechEx (evertiq)

Shipments of gesture sensing control user interfaces are poised to grow 10 percent year over year, to reach 1.8 billion units in 2015, according to IHS (Webwire)

Global market for wearable sensors expected to increase to $5.5 billion by 2025, says MarketResearchReports.Biz (SYS-CON)

The wearable segment has been nearly doubling since it appeared on the CEA radar screen in 2011 at just $240 million in 2011. It is expected to reach nearly $6 billion in 2016 says CEA (EE Times)

Device Announcements

Apple Watch now on sale at Best Buy USA (Fortune)

Privacy Visor – facial blocking glasses – will go on sale in Japan in 2016 (PC World)

Omate and French fashion house Emanuel Ungaro launched the Ungaro smart ring (Engadget)

Accessories firm Catalyst opened up pre-orders for the first waterproof Apple Watch case (Apple Insider)

Samsung offered a sneak peak of the round smartwatch to launch at IFA in September (MobileSyrup)

Funding, Crowdfunding, and M&A

Senth 1N1 AR cycling glasses hits Indiegogo to raise $40,000 (Indiegogo)

Space VR kickstarter project aims to put a VR camera in space (Kickstarter)

Major Milestones

Microsoft launched a translator app for Android Wear and Apple Watch (The Verge)

Hangouts 4.0 is now live with update to Android Wear (9to5 Google)

Android Wear companion app 1.3 released, preps smartwatches for new features (Android Police)

Swim.com launched world’s first swimming app for Android Wear devices (Swimming World Magazine)

Salesforce launched 20 new Salesforce-driven apps for the Apple Watch (Fortune)

NASA launched a contest to crowdsource smartwatch apps to be used in space (CNET)

Washington Wizards latest to sign on to use StriVR for VR training (MarketWatch)

World’s first VR Film Fest announced (MobileSyrup)

Nymi makes history with world’s first biometric wearable mobile payment (BetaKit)

Rumours

Google “adjustable display” patent suggests they may be looking at creating smart helmets (TechRadar)

Samsung Gear A smartwatch may come in multiple variants (Android Headlines)

Tobii Pro launched software to accelerate and reduce cost of wearable eye-tracking research (IBN)