Tag Archives: Wearables

Revolutionizing Everyday Tech: How Edge AI is Reshaping Consumer Electronics

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, , , , , , , , ,

Our last blog explored the features of the iPhone 16, driving into its advancements in AI-driven functionalities and performance improvements. Before that, we discussed how Edge AI is revolutionizing autonomous vehicles. But the magic of Edge AI extends far beyond cars. Edge AI in consumer electronics is transforming the way we live, work, and play. This powerful technology brings machine learning algorithms directly to your devices, offering faster processing, greater privacy, and unparalleled efficiency. In this blog, we will uncover the effects of Edge AI in consumer electronics. By the end, you’ll have a comprehensive understanding of how this cutting-edge technology is shaping our reality.

Consumer Electronics Show 2024

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is a premier global tech event where industry leaders and innovators unveil cutting-edge consumer electronics and trends that shape the future.

The Consumer Electronics Show which is held annually, attracts industry leaders, tech enthusiasts, and startups alike, featuring thousands of exhibitors and cutting-edge products that range from smart home devices to advanced automotive technologies. The show serves as a platform for unveiling groundbreaking advancements, including developments in Edge AI, and offers a glimpse into the future of technology that shapes our everyday lives. With its dynamic presentations and networking opportunities, CES continues to play a pivotal role in the evolution of the consumer electronics landscape.

Enhancing Wearable Technology

Wearable devices, such as fitness trackers and smartwatches, significantly benefit from Edge AI. These gadgets monitor vital signs, track physical activity, and provide personalized health insights in real-time. Processing data on the device allows for immediate feedback and recommendations without constant internet access.

The Apple Watch Series 4 through Series 9 exemplify this, featuring advanced sensors and algorithms for continuous heart rate monitoring, detection of arrhythmias, and automatic fall detection. Notably, the ability to perform an electrocardiogram (ECG) straight from the wrist showcases its Edge AI capabilities. The latest watchOS versions further integrate these features.

Android devices running on Wear OS, like the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, also incorporate robust health monitoring features, including blood oxygen levels, VO2 max, and sleep analysis. These wearables utilize Edge AI to provide real-time feedback on workouts and health trends, ensuring user privacy and quick response times by keeping data processing local.

Health Monitoring at Home

Another significant application of Edge AI can be found in smart homes within health monitoring devices. Fitness trackers and smartwatches incorporate advanced algorithms to track your physical activity, monitor vital signs, detect irregularities, and provide real-time health insights. Smart scales and blood pressure monitors equipped with Edge AI can offer precise data analysis locally, ensuring greater privacy and swift feedback for users.

Smart scales like the Withings Body+ deliver detailed body composition readings, including fat, muscle, and bone mass, all processed on-device to ensure quick and private data assessment. Blood pressure monitors such as the Omron HeartGuide, which uses Edge AI to detect hypertension and irregular heartbeats, also provide instant feedback, alerting users to seek medical advice if necessary.

Additionally, devices like the Oura Ring go beyond basic fitness tracking to offer personalized health insights by monitoring sleep patterns, readiness scores, and overall wellness metrics using Edge AI. By keeping data processing local, these devices ensure user privacy while delivering instant and accurate health information, making Edge AI a game-changer in home health monitoring.

Transforming Smart Homes

Edge AI is at the heart of the smart home revolution. Devices like smart thermostats, security cameras, and voice assistants are becoming increasingly intelligent and responsive. Imagine a smart thermostat that not only adjusts the temperature based on your preferences but also learns your schedule and adapts accordingly. By processing data locally, these devices offer immediate responses and enhanced privacy, as sensitive information never leaves the home.

Smart security cameras equipped with Edge AI can distinguish between a pet and an intruder, reducing false alarms and providing more accurate monitoring. Voice assistants, like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, benefit from faster response times and improved privacy by processing voice commands directly on the device.

Enhanced Entertainment Systems

Edge AI is also transforming the way we experience entertainment at home. Smart televisions and streaming devices are becoming more adept at personalizing content based on individual viewing habits. By utilizing Edge AI, these devices can recommend movies and shows that align with your preferences and viewing history, providing a tailored entertainment experience without necessitating data transfers to external servers.

Gaming consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X use Edge AI to optimize performance and enrich user experiences. These consoles employ machine learning to improve graphics, reduce latency, and provide real-time adjustments tailored to the player’s style. AI-driven graphics rendering adapts to player actions, delivering smoother transitions and more realistic visuals. By keeping data processing within the device, Edge AI ensures faster response times and maintains user privacy.

Intelligent Appliances

Intelligent Appliances

Household appliances such as refrigerators, washing machines, and ovens are also benefiting from Edge AI technologies. Imagine a refrigerator that can monitor its contents, suggest recipes, and create a shopping list. Washing machines can optimize settings for the laundry load and fabric type, while smart ovens adjust cooking times to ensure perfectly cooked meals. The use of Edge AI in consumer electronics brings a new level of convenience, efficiency, and personalization, transforming our daily interaction with technology.

For example, the LG InstaView ThinQ refrigerator, for instance, tracks stored items and suggests recipes, syncing with your smartphone to create shopping lists. The Samsung FlexWash washer and FlexDry dryer use AI to suggest the optimal wash cycle, adjusting water levels and cycle times to ensure a perfect wash. Smart ovens like the June Oven leverage AI to recognize food types and automatically adjust cooking settings, while an app allows real-time monitoring and alerts.

Improved Connectivity and Interoperability

Edge AI enables better connectivity and seamless integration of various smart devices in a home, ensuring your smart home ecosystem operates harmoniously. Devices communicate efficiently and cohesively respond to a user’s commands, enhancing convenience and functionality. For instance, smart lights can dim automatically when you start a movie, or your home security system can arm itself when you leave the house based on learned behaviors and routines.

Philips Hue smart lighting can sync with your entertainment setup to provide an immersive lighting experience that adjusts based on your viewing content. When connected with smart speakers like Amazon Echo or Google Nest, the system can also be controlled via voice commands. In-home security, the Nest Secure alarm system integrates with an array of smart products like cameras, locks, and lights, performing tasks such as locking doors and turning off lights when the alarm is set.

Smart thermostats like Ecobee or Nest Learning Thermostat not only adjust temperatures based on your schedule but also work with other smart devices to optimize energy use, such as activating ceiling fans or opening smart blinds. By creating a network where devices interact seamlessly, Edge AI ensures that your smart home adapts to your lifestyle, offering an integrated, efficient, and intuitive living experience.

Revolutionizing Mobile Devices

Edge AI is transforming smartphones into powerful, intelligent devices capable of performing complex tasks without relying on cloud-based services. With Edge AI, smartphones can offer features like real-time language translation, enhanced photo and video editing, and advanced security measures.

Imagine traveling to a foreign country and using your smartphone to translate conversations in real-time, or capturing stunning photos and videos with AI-powered enhancements. Edge AI also plays a crucial role in boosting smartphone security by enabling features like facial recognition and biometric authentication, ensuring that your data remains secure.

Pros and Cons of Edge AI in Consumer Electronics

Edge AI brings a multitude of advantages to consumer electronics. By processing data locally, it offers faster response times and reduced latency, resulting in more immediate and efficient interactions. Enhanced privacy is another major benefit, as sensitive information remains on the device, reducing the risk of data breaches. Additionally, Edge AI devices can function without constant internet connectivity, making them more reliable and accessible in areas with limited internet access.

However, there are also some drawbacks. The integration of Edge AI technology can increase the cost of consumer electronics, making them less affordable for some consumers. Furthermore, local devices may have limited processing power compared to centralized cloud servers, potentially limiting the complexity and scope of AI applications. Another challenge is keeping Edge AI devices up-to-date with the latest algorithms and software, which can be more difficult compared to centralized cloud-based solutions.

Conclusion

Edge AI is revolutionizing consumer electronics, bringing faster processing, enhanced privacy, and improved user experiences to various devices. From smart homes to wearable technology and mobile devices, Edge AI is shaping the future of technology in ways we could only have imagined a few years ago.
While there are challenges to overcome, the benefits of Edge AI far outweigh the drawbacks, making it a crucial tool for businesses and consumers alike. Stay tuned for our next blog, where we’ll explore the exciting world of Edge AI IoT Devices and Smart Sensors. In the meantime, consider how Edge AI could enhance your business and personal life—it’s time to embrace the future of technology.

AIoT: How the Intersection of AI and IoT Will Drive Innovation for Decades to Come

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Internet of Things, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We have covered the evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) over the years as they have gained prominence. IoT devices collect a massive amount of data. Cisco projects by the end of 2021, IoT devices will collect over 800 zettabytes of data per year. Meanwhile, AI algorithms can parse through big data and teach themselves to analyze and identify patterns to make predictions. Both technologies enable a seemingly endless amount of applications retained a massive impact on many industry verticals.

What happens when you merge them? The result is aptly named the AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things) and it will take IoT devices to the next level.

WHAT IS AIOT?

AIoT is any system that integrates AI technologies with IoT infrastructure, enhancing efficiency, human-machine interactions, data management and analytics.

IoT enables devices to collect, store, and analyze big data. Device operators and field engineers typically control devices. AI enhances IoT’s existing systems, enabling them to take the next step to determine and take the appropriate action based on the analysis of the data.

By embedding AI into infrastructure components, including programs, chipsets, and edge computing, AIoT enables intelligent, connected systems to learn, self-correct and self-diagnose potential issues.

960x0

One common example comes in the surveillance field. Surveillance camera can be used as an image sensor, sending every frame to an IoT system which analyzes the feed for certain objects. AI can analyze the frame and only send frames when it detects a specific object—significantly speeding up the process while reducing the amount of data generated since irrelevant frames are excluded.

CCTV-Traffic-Monitoring-1024x683

While AIoT will no doubt find a variety of applications across industries, the three segments we expect to see the most impact on are wearables, smart cities, and retail.

WEARABLES

Wearable-IoT-Devices

The global wearable device market is estimated to hit more than $87 billion by 2022. AI applications on wearable devices such as smartwatches pose a number of potential applications, particularly in the healthtech sector.

Researchers in Taiwan have been studying the potential for an AIoT wearable system for electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis and cardiac disease detection. The system would integrate a wearable IoT-based system with an AI platform for cardiac disease detection. The wearable collects real-time health data and stores it in a cloud where an AI algorithm detects disease with an average of 94% accuracy. Currently, Apple Watch Series 4 or later includes an ECG app which captures symptoms of irregular, rapid or skipped heartbeats.

Although this device is still in development, we expect to see more coming out of the wearables segment as 5G enables more robust cloud-based processing power, taking the pressure off the devices themselves.

SMART CITIES

We’ve previously explored the future of smart cities in our blog series A Smarter World. With cities eager to invest in improving public safety, transport, and energy efficiency, AIoT will drive innovation in the smart city space.

There are a number of potential applications for AIoT in smart cities. AIoT’s ability to analyze data and act opens up a number of possibilities for optimizing energy consumption for IoT systems. Smart streetlights and energy grids can analyze data to reduce wasted energy without inconveniencing citizens.

Some smart cities have already adopted AIoT applications in the transportation space. New Delhi, which boasts some of the worst traffic in the world, features an Intelligent Transport Management System (ITMS) which makes real-time dynamic decisions on traffic flows to accelerate traffic.

RETAIL

AIoT has the potential to enhance the retail shopping experience with digital augmentation. The same smart cameras we referenced earlier are being used to detect shoplifters. Walmart recently confirmed it has installed smart security cameras in over 1,000 stores.

smart-shopping-cart

One of the big innovations for AIoT involves smart shopping carts. Grocery stores in both Canada and the United States are experimenting with high-tech shopping carts, including one from Caper which uses image recognition and built-in sensors to determine what a person puts into the shopping cart.

The potential for smart shopping carts is vast—these carts will be able to inform customers of deals and promotion, recommend products based on their buying decisions, enable them to view an itemized list of their current purchases, and incorporate indoor navigation to lead them to their desired items.

A smart shopping cart company called IMAGR recently raised $14 million in a pre-Series A funding round, pointing toward a bright future for smart shopping carts.

CONCLUSION

AIoT represents the intersection of AI, IoT, 5G, and big data. 5G enables the cloud processing power for IoT devices to employ AI algorithms to analyze big data to determine and enact action items. These technologies are all relatively young, and as they continue to grow, they will empower innovators to build a smarter future for our world.

How Wearable Smart Clothing Will Revolutionize Health, Fitness, and Fashion

Android Development, Healthcare Tech, Internet of Things, iOS Development, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wearables are in a nascent stage since coming into vogue through the advent of Samsung Galaxy Gear in 2013 and the Apple Watch in 2015. Smartwatches and fitness devices like Fitbit continue to reign supreme and help us make our lives more efficient while tracking vital health data and improving our workouts.

The next generation of wearables will be able to cultivate even more data and transmit that information to health professionals with the help of 5G. Machine learning algorithms will help predict potential health issues based on the data gathered. In order to cultivate this data, we predict that wearable clothes fitted with sensors will rise in popularity, yielding ground-breaking applications in Fitness, Healthcare, Emergency Services, and Fashion.

FITNESS

The release of Fitbit in 2009 marked the first consumer-grade wearable focused on activity tracking, precipitating the advent of the smartwatch by four years. Since then, Fitbit has designed and released a line of products focusing on activity tracking, including the Fitbit Versa, a health and fitness smartwatch, and the Fitbit Ace, an activity tracker for children 8+.

Screen Shot 2019-02-19 at 9.08.59 AM

Fitbit isn’t the only major player in the wearables game. Nadi X Yoga Pants use built-in haptic vibrations to encourage wearers to move and hold positions.

Sensoria’s second generation connected socks use textile pressure sensors to track the pressure put on the user’s foot when running and inform the user when it senses too much pressure on a particular body part to prevent injury. They also track time, cadence, pace, speed, and distance.

The Thin Ice smart vest cools your body using thermo receptors, activating the bodies brown fat pathways which effectively burns white fat (bad fat).

OMsignal’s OmBra measures heart rate and breathing rhythm in addition to time, distance, cadence pace, and impact for runners.

athos

The Athos Core is perhaps the most thorough and expansive application in smart clothes today. Athos Core collects data from a line of clothing embedded with micro-EMG sensors and analyzes it to help improve your workout. Athos shirts can evaluate electrical activity produced by your muscles to track the exertion of major upper-body muscle groups (pecs, bis, tris, delts, lats, and traps).

HEALTHCARE AND EMERGENCY SERVICES

As cited in our last blog on 5G and healthcare, 86% of doctors say wearables increase patient engagement with their own health.

cleansock_phone-02

The second generation Owlet Smart Sock is a smart-sock made for babies which uses pulse oximetry technology to monitor heart rate and sleep patterns.

Siren Smartsocks are designed to prevent diabetics from suffering from foot injuries. They have microsensors designed to continuously monitor temperature for inflammation and alert users through their smartphone app.

As wearable clothes become more popular, applications will automatically contact emergency services when the wearer’s health shows major warning signs.

Invisiwear offers wearable smart jewelry and other accessories with a panic button which gives the option to share your location with loved ones and 9-1-1.

The iBeat Heart Watch monitors health and notifies your loved ones and an EMT team in emergency situations.

FASHION

“Fashion tech” is gradually earning adoption.

On a mass consumer level, Levi’s teamed up with Google’s Project Jacquard to offer a smart trucker jacket designed for urban cyclists. Conducive yarn makes it easy for the user to tap, swipe, or hold the sleeve to fulfill simple tasks like changing music tracks, block or answer calls, or access navigation information.

Vicenza-headdress-by-The-Unseen-for-Swarovski_dezeen_468_SQ5

A London-based design firm THE UNSEEN created a line of luxury accessories including a backpack, phone case, scarf, and more which respond to air pressure, body temperature, wind, sunlight, and touch to change colors.

THE FUTURE OF WEARABLE CLOTHES

Recently, NBA commissioner Adam Silver unveiled the future of the NBA Jersey: a line of smart jerseys that allow you to customize the name and number on the jersey.

There’s no doubt that the future of wearable clothes is still unveiling itself to us as 5G receives mass adoption and programmers continue to uncover potential applications of machine learning. What is clear at this point is that wearable clothes will help make the human race smarter, stronger, healthier, and more efficient.

How 5G Will Enable the Next Generation of Healthcare

Healthcare Tech, Internet of Things, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In the past month, we’ve explored 5G, or fifth generation cellular technology, and how 5G will shape the future. In this piece, we’ll spotlight the many ways in which 5G will revolutionize the healthcare industry.

DATA TRANSMISSION

Many medical machines like MRIs and other imaging machines generate very large files that must then be sent to specialists for review. When operating on a network with low bandwidth, the transmission can take a long time or not send successfully. This means patients must wait even longer for treatment, inhibiting the efficiency of healthcare providers. 5G networks will vastly surpass current network speeds, enabling healthcare providers to quickly and reliably transport huge data files, allowing patients and doctors to get results fast.

EXPANDING TELEMEDICINE

why-use-telemedicine

A study by Market Research Future showed that the future of telemedicine is bright—an annual growth rate of 16.5% is expected from 2017 to 2023. 5G is among the primary reasons for that level of growth. In order to support the real-time high-quality video necessary for telemedicine to be effective, hospitals and healthcare providers will need 5G networks that can reliably provide high-speed connections. Telemedicine will result in higher quality healthcare in rural areas and increased access to specialists around the world. Additionally, 5G will enable growth in AR, adding a new dimension to the quality of telemedicine.

REMOTE MONITORING AND WEARABLES

It’s no secret that 5G will enable incredible innovation in the IoT space. One of the ways in which IoT will enable more personalized healthcare involves wearables. According to Anthem, 86% of doctors say wearables increase patient engagement with their own health and wearables are expected to reduce hospital costs by 16% in the next five years.

Wearables like Fitbit track health information that can be vital for doctors to monitor patient health and offer preventative care. While the impact may initially be negligible, as technology advances and more applications for gathering data through wearables emerge, 5G will enable the high-speed, low-latency, data-intensive transfers necessary to take health-focused wearables to the next level. Doctors with increased access to patient information and data will be able to monitor and ultimately predict potential risks to patient health and enact preventative measures to get ahead of health issues.

Companies like CommandWear are creating wearable technology that helps save lives by enabling first responders to be more efficient and more conveniently communicate with their teams.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

In the future, artificial intelligence will analyze data to determine potential diagnoses and help determine the best treatment for a patient. The large amounts of data needed for real-time rapid machine learning requires ultra-reliable and high-bandwidth networks—the type of networks only 5G can offer.

One potential use case for AI in healthcare will be Health Management Systems. Picture a system that combines the Internet of Things with cloud computing and big data technology to fully exploit health status change information. Through data-mining, potential diseases can be screened and alarmed in advance. Health Management Systems will gradually receive mass adoption as 5G enables the data-transmission speeds necessary for machine learning to operate in the cloud and develop algorithms to predict future outcomes.

MAJOR PLAYERS

Right now, the major players who serve to benefit from 5G are the telecom companies developing technology that will enable mass adoption. Companies like Huawei Technologies, Nokia, Ericsson, Qualcomm, Verizon, AT&T, and Cisco Systems are investing massive sums of money into research and development and patenting various technologies, some of which will no doubt become the cornerstones of the future of healthcare.

Qualcomm recently hosted a contest to create a tricoder—a real life device based on a machine in the Star Trek TV movie franchise. Tricoders are portable medical devices that would enable patients to diagnose 13 conditions and continuously monitor five vital signs.

For a full list of major players in the 5G game, check out this awesome list from GreyB.

CONCLUSION

With human lives at stake, healthcare is the sector in which 5G could have the most transformative impact on our society. As the Qualcomm Tricoder contest shows, we are gradually building toward the society previously only dreamed about in sci-fi fiction–and 5G will help pave the way.

Cashing Out the Smartphone: How Mobile Commerce Is Changing Retail

Android Development, iOS Development, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This week, we wrap up our five-part series on Top App Development Trends for 2016 with an article on mobile commerce! For a recap, take a moment to review our last four articles on cross-platform app development, cloud integration, mobile security and IoT.

Smartphones have brought about unparalleled convenience in our daily lives. We are constantly connected to our rolodex of contacts with a variety of methods of communication. We can access all the information available on the world wide web anytime. We can find the nearest store of choice anywhere we go. For businesses, the mobile platform represents not only a major avenue for advertising, but an opportunity to give customers the ultimate convenience when purchasing products.

According to Internet Retailer, mobile commerce represents 30% of all US e-commerce and rose by 38.7% from 2014 to 2015. According to The Mobile Playbook, the absence of a mobile presence is the financial equivalent of closing a store for one day a week. Suffice to say, mobile commerce is only on the rise in the coming years. Here are the top mobile commerce trends for 2016:

INTEGRATING PHYSICAL WITH DIGITAL

Although the digital world is virtually omnipresent in households, the appeal of immediately receiving one’s purchases remains attractive. Retailers are offering an increasing variety of online + in-store options. Apps like Curbside have partnered with Target & Kroger’s to enable customers to skip the line when picking up their purchases.

PERSONALIZED MOBILE PAYMENTS DRIVE LOYALTY

Although services such as Apple Pay and Android Pay were once hailed as the future, they have had a hard time receiving mass adoption. This hasn’t stopped the impact of the mobile wallet on commerce. Starbucks drives 16% of transactions through its mobile app. Walmart Pay arrived in December 2015, and now Target is next in line to develop their own payment app.

WEARABLES ON THE RISE

According to Arc, there will be a 61% growth in wearable ownership in 2016. App developers and retailers are still plotting on how to capitalize on wearables. Many anticipate a hands-free shopping experience in which one can simply walk out with their purchases and have automatic charges through wearable devices. Wearables represent a major avenue for retailers to create innovative strategies and dictate trends to come.

MOBILE WEB DRIVES PURCHASES

While about 85% of time spent on mobile devices occurs in apps, the mobile web has actually proven to be a more successful in driving website traffic. Consumers spend 80% of their app time on their top 3 apps. The mobile web drives twice the amount of site traffic than mobile apps. With 82% of smartphone users looking to their phones in stores when deciding what to buy, many anticipate the mobile web to surpass apps as the largest revenue driver in the next few years.

This concludes our five-part series on Top App Development Trends for 2016! Follow the Mystic Media Blog for more awesome articles on app development, website design, strategic marketing and more!

Apple Vs. Google: Who Will Win 2015?

Android Development, iOS Development, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

With 2015 off to the races, we take a look ahead at what’s in store for the top tech companies this year.

APPLE

They say it’s not over until it’s over, however, Apple, the biggest tech powerhouse in the world, is unmerciful. Apple announced the first week of January broke their record for weekly billings with over half a billion dollars spent in the App Store on apps and in-app purchases.

2014 was a huge year for Apple. They released the iPhone 6, iOS 8, OS Yosemite, and, perhaps most important when we look forward at the coming year, Swift, a programming language designed specifically for iOS.

As we detailed previously in our article Swift Execution, Swift is the most beginner-friendly programming language and, as is custom with Apple products, received widespread adoption both by developers and tech curriculums. 2015 will be the year we see the beginnings of Swift’s impact and what developers are capable of doing using the language.

On the hardware side of things, there are rumors Apple will release a larger-screened iPad, a retina-displayed MacBook Air, and even potentially a new model of iPhone; however, one product is for sure: Apple Watch.

Apple Watch represents the first new Apple product since the iPad. It’s their first foray into wearables, along with the first wearable device expected to receive widespread adoption. We will cover this subject in-depth next week when we explore wearables. For now, what matters is that surveys say 18% of iPhone 6 owners will definitely buy the Apple Watch when it’s released, a number which will grow when the functionality of the device is better known. Shipments were recently announced to begin in April.

If any of this is any indication, 2015 will be a great year for Apple. It’s going to be tough for the competition to keep up.

GOOGLE

Google has its work cut out for them. Expect the release of a new OS, however, it’s more likely it will be an update for Lollipop than a major upgrade considering the impact of material design.

One of the big projects Google has coming in some form in 2015 is Project Ara, a product development concept in which the owner of a smartphone can upgrade specific parts of the phone, such as the camera, or processor. PC Advisor likens it to Legos. Although there’s no set release date, Google has said they plan on introducing in some stage in 2015.

Google recently announced they are pulling Google Glass from the market in its current form. While many are trying to spin this into a failure (specifically this hilarious C-NET article), Google insists the withdrawal is actually the next step of the Google Glass program. They have held steady Google Glass was in a beta stage are still developing the product. One cannot deny the potential impact of a year’s worth of usage on the research process. Though no official date has been released, the new product will likely compete with the Apple Watch either later this year, or early next year.

Aside from Project Ara and Google Glass, expect new Android TV, Android Auto, and Android Wear. Android TV, announced last year at Google I/O, will bring all the apps connected to Android smartphones and tablets and bring them to the TV platform.

Android Wear will likely expand to support more devices and become more widely-adopted when Apple Watch releases.

Overall, unless the Apple Watch release proves to be a major failure, it’s unlikely Google will overcome Apple in the mobile hardware and software department. With widespread adoption of wearables looming, it’s going to be a very exciting year for technology.

Mystic Media is an iOS and Android application development, web design, and strategic marketing firm. Please take a moment to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook. Contact us today by clicking here, or by phone at 801.994.6815