April
Bad news! Nike fires majority of their FuelBand team, shuttering the product indefinitely. This was an interesting development, as many in the tech press and beyond saw FuelBand as pre-eminent in the fitness band field. This is largely because Nike marketed FuelBand pretty specifically at men - unlike Fitbit which is asexual, shading into feminine - and most tech journalists are men. I know I am.
To use a farming analogy, Nike will instead henceforth hitch its "wagon" (largely the strength of its brand plus accumulated fitness software nous) to sturdier "tractors" (hardware) made by proper "tractor manufacturers" (tech companies, notably Apple). Got that?
Good news! Amazon launches a dedicated wearable store. Oh, and LeapFrog debuts a fitness tracker for children. Why should adults have all the fun of being hectored about how many steps they've taken in a 24-hour period? Children now take computers, touchscreens and always-on connectivity for granted. Get them used to wearables and this is a market sector with legs. Increasingly fit and sturdy legs, at that.
May
Apple announce the hire Divya Nag, part of a swathe of health tech industry hires. Samsung launch SimBand, a modular reference platform for wearable health sensors. Although 2014's focus is on fitness, more generalised health and (ugh) "wellness" may well end up as a bigger market for wearables in the long run.
In focus: Garmin want to run off with the fitness crown
May was a busy month for Garmin, tipping a toe in the causal fitness band market with the excellent Vivofit, and launching the Forerunner 15, with which they aimed to annex an even bigger slice of the serious fitness aficionados. It's a GPS-toting smartwatch, adding distance, pace, calories and (when a monitor is paired) heart rate. They followed this up in October with the higher end, waterproof, altimeter-packing, GPS-tracking Forerunner 920XT.
By adding heart-rate monitoring to the watch itself rather than requiring a strap-on, TomTom and others have fought back over the course of 2014. Even so, for the serious jogger, there's still been really only one brand to look up in 2014 and that's Garmin.
In focus: LG step up
Enter the Koreans stage left with the LifeBand – a Nike FuelBand-like tracker, only very pretty and with smartwatch features – and Heart Rate Earphones: pulse sensing in-ear cans which play nicely together. Reviews found the LifeBand too "me too", and the Earphones failed to make a splash.
LG also had a stab at Android Wear, with the square G Watch and round-raced G Watch R, with the former turning reviewers cold, but the latter raising a pleased eyebrow from our John McCann. LG, however, is traditionally a fast learner, and will come back next year with better, smarter offerings.
June
Acer launches its Liquid Leap smartband, while Barclaycard launch the astonishingly ugly bPay contactless pay wristband for summer events.
In focus: Google Glass stumbles
It finally went on sale in the UK on June 23 for £1,000 although still officially described as a beta product, but it's hardly been a sterling year for the internet specs. Witness the departure of three key executives, including its "architect" Babak Parviz tootling off to Amazon, a Reuters survey suggesting that nine of the product's 16 biggest app suppliers (including Twitter) have stopped working on the platform due to lack of interest and relatively low sales and US support "Basecamps" closing down.
Bars in San Francisco have banned Glass after assaults on wearers and the ban hammer falls also on cars, cinemas, casinos, hospitals and banks in the US. Regardless, Google is reportedly working on a version 2.0, with chips supplied by Intel and a more flexible platform promised.
