Big Ad Spenders Hang Hopes on Wearable Tech as Smartphone Sales Soften
Samsung shut down a portion of New York’s Times Square last Wednesday for its latest product launch. But unlike its other high-profile unveilings, the attention was focused on a “smartwatch” instead of a smartphone.
The Galaxy Gear, a mobile device that pairs with a smartphone and is worn on the wrist, is part of the latest in a trend sweeping the mobile-device industry at large: Tech companies are betting on wearable computers (“wearables”) to become the next major consumer category as interest in smartphones wane.
“We see the body as the next frontier for personal computing and the wrist is one of the most-accepted places on the body for consumers to wear a sensor device,” Forrester analyst Sara Rotman Epps wrote in an email.
