Mainline newspapers and even Websites have reported today that in the present domain occupied by smart watches and smart bands, another technology was gathering momentum – smart clothing.
The Guardian, for example, has reported on the growing importance of smart garments. The article said because a shirt could hold a greater number of sensors closer to the user’s skin, it could collect a larger range of data. Angela McIntyre, Gartner’s Research Director, told the Guardian that a smart shirt could do things like measure “the full wave of the heart beat rather than just the pulse”. She added that first generation smart shirts had been available from companies like Adidas for some time now, largely for sports professionals, though now, regular manufacturers of garments were showing interest in them for a much larger audience.
Gartner itself has predicted that wearable electronic devices for fitness shipments will reach 68.1 million units in 2015, down from 70 million units in 2014. The reason for the dip is the rise of smart garment market. But the market for smart wristbands and other fitness monitors will rebound in 2016, with over 60m shipments, because of versatile designs and models with lower-cost displays.
At present, the main fitness wearables are smart wristbands, sports watches, heart rate monitor chest straps and smart garments.
Gartner is of the view that the smart garment product category has the greatest potential for growth going forward because the category is emerging from the testing phase and smart shirts are available to athletes and coaches of professional teams.
Because of them, consumers will be able to integrate the data from most wearables into a single account, to be analysed.
So, will it be that in the long run, smart watches, bands and monitors will give way to the all-in-one smart shirt? Now that’s anybody’s guess.
Image Credit: For representative purposes only: Sensoria
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