Digital Lifescapes

Both basic and smart wearable bands are an emerging high growth market. A total of 2.7 million wearable bands shipped worldwide in Q1 2014, according to the latest market study by Canalys. Fitbit maintained its leadership position with nearly 50 percent market share. Fitbit continued to ship most of the units in the basic band segment. Jawbone, another basic band competitor, also grew rapidly as it expanded its international distribution after the initial launch of the UP24 in Q4. Nike’s share of basic band shipments, however, dropped to 10 percent. "The Nike+ FuelBand has frankly been outmatched on sales," said Daniel Matte, analyst at Canalys . "Its competitors’ speed, international reach, broader channel distribution, integration with other fitness communities, superior web sites and multi-platform support have proven to be major advantages." Though Nike has been reported to be canceling future FuelBand products, the company’s focus is now on making use of ...

Although mobile network operators have relied mostly on connection fees to generate machine to machine (M2M) revenues; network connectivity and connection management revenues represent only 10 to 30 percent of the M2M value chain that's dependent upon communications carrier and geographic location. Value-Added Services (VAS) for application development, enablement, provisioning, management, and system integration are the bulk of the M2M services opportunity in this growing market that's set to reach $31 billion by 2016, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. "No one size fits all. Operator choices to capture the burgeoning M2M services market will be dependent not only on the value of their assets and VAS platforms, but also their partnerships and target market verticals," said Dan Shey, M2M practice director at ABI Research . For instance, connecting coffee vending machines to the internet may be a near term opportunity, but can it grow to a glob...

Mobile device apps adoption has created many new business opportunities for software developers with unique domain expertise. A case in point is the sports and health related mobile application market. Together they will grow to over $400 million in 2016 -- up from just $120 million in 2010. Much of that growth will be spurred by the ability of mobile handsets to easily connect to wearable devices that in turn can deliver new functionality, accuracy, and appeal to sports and fitness applications. As the mobile handset adds new ways to access and support healthcare applications, it will become increasingly important within the healthcare market -- including home monitoring systems for aging users, personal emergency response services, and remote healthcare monitoring applications. However, sports and fitness will dominate the mobile health application market. "Downloadable apps are moving the sports tracking device market from proprietary devices to mobile phones, b...

There's huge potential to evolve the healthcare industry by utilizing more appropriate information and communications technology (ICT), and mobile device applications are an excellent example of that upside opportunity. However, the market for mobile-enabled healthcare has struggled to get gain momentum. Held back by antiquated regulation, personal privacy issues and an apparent lack of mobile standards, industry players -- healthcare providers, pharmaceutical companies, insurers, governmental organizations and others -- have yet to find a clear and coordinated path towards that m-health bonanza. “There have been experiments with mobile programs,” said Victoria Petrock, eMarketer research analyst and author of the new report entitled Mobile Healthcare Marketing: Prescriptions for Health and Wellness on the Go. But many efforts to market and deliver large-scale healthcare via mobile have, to date, been siloed and ineffectively measured.” According to a global survey ...