Wearable technologies are increasingly seen as the gateway to the Internet of Things (IOT)—the controllers to a burgeoning collection of “smart” objects and functions. Devices like the Apple Watch, Google Glass and fitness trackers such as the FitBit are already collecting information that ultimately may be used to make the wearer’s lives easier.
But there’s a new category of wearable tech that could eclipse the others. Delivering audio cues to users and accepting voice-activated commands, “hearables” are set to have a huge impact on the Internet of Things, likely delivering all sorts of new capabilities—even voice-activated shopping—to consumers.
Hearable technologies are projected to rack up $5 billion in sales by 2018, according UK-based Wifore Consulting, or about the same amount as the entire wearables market will take in this year. Why? They tend to be more discreet than other wearable interfaces, and people are already accustomed to in-ear technologies.
“Earbuds are the only piece of wearable tech to have gained ubiquity and social acceptance,” Nick Hunn, founder and CTO of Wifore Consulting, said in a report cited by CNBC. “These devices are about to undergo a revolution in capability, getting rid of their cables and giving them the opportunity to be the standard-bearer for wearable technology.”
In-ear assistance
One of the first to market an in-ear device is the German manufacturer Bragi, which offers a wireless headphone that not only plays music to accompany one’s workouts, but also measures heart rate, blood pressure and respiration to offer computer-generated, audio feedback.
Stateside, Intel is developing a similar health-monitoring headphone device with rapper 50 Cent. And industry watchers say that Apple may be working on a hearable device following its $3.2 billion acquisition of Beats.
Hearables’ potential isn’t limited to fitness tracking, however. Devices could soon optimize listening settings for their wearers in a crowded room, for example, or feed crucial information to users discreetly in social settings. But the real potential lies in their ability to function as a listening device. Similar to Apple’s Siri and Microsoft's Cortana, most hearables will accept spoken commands—and that means they can be used to perform any number of IoT functions, from turning off the lights to ordering groceries.
Calling an audible
Microphones are the “stealth technology” set to enable widespread acceptance of the Internet of Things, said James McQuivey, vice president of research and principal analyst at Forrester Research, in his keynote speech at IRCE in June.
Pointing to voice-activated systems such as the Amazon Echo and the microphone-enabled remote controls issued by Google TV, he posited a home setting in which commands voiced aloud would assist with shopping: “At any moment you could say, ‘(Insert name of retail relationship here), send me toothpaste.”
The Amazon Echo speaker system allows users to re-order Prime-eligible products already in their shopping histories simply by speaking their wants aloud, in addition to handling such tasks as adjusting thermostats and playing music. Ordering new items for delivery or voicing a shopping search aloud are simply the next steps, and Amazon already offers a voice-activated shopping app for Android and IOS smart watches.
"Amazon doesn’t want to be a destination anymore," wrote TechCrunch's Greg Kumparak in a recent column. "They don’t want to be something you have to go to; they want to be ubiquitous. They want their store 'front end' to be floating in the ether all around you, just waiting for you to open your mouth."
Smart phones and smart watches have helped encourage mobile proximity payments, but hearables may leapfrog them in e-commerce as voice-recognition technologies improve. Equipped with two-way, in-ear hearable devices, people could soon be able to perform practically any shopping function—from finding a store, to ordering an item, to making a payment—from any location within the range of one's voice.
