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New Study Shows Singapore Companies Outpace Hong Kong Rivals in Internet Marketing

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Image result for New Study Shows Singapore Companies Outpace Hong Kong Rivals in Internet MarketingHONG KONG, CHINA–(Marketwired – Jun 21, 2017) – A new study has found that Singapore businesses are three times more likely to be switched on to Internet Marketing than their rivals in Hong Kong. The research, carried out by WL Media HK, shows that Hong Kong firms are being left in the digital dust by Singapore Exchange listed companies, who seem to be more digital savvy and better able to promote their firms online.

Despite its reputation for digital prowess, a greater number of Hong Kong businesses fell short on even the most basic of marketing activities, according to the study. Those based in Hong Kong were less likely to have claimed their free Google My Business listing for example, which is essential for Google local search visibility. More than 7% of listed Hong Kong companies do not even have a phone number registered with Google, meaning that click-to-dial functions on mobile phones won’t work. This compares with only 1.2% of Singapore firms missing this essential datum.

“Companies who neglect to claim their listing from Google Business are not taking advantage of one of the most basic ways to promote their business and improve their interaction with their online customers and stakeholders,” said Raymond Lowe, from WL Media HK who led the study.

While internet marketing has boomed in Hong Kong over the last ten years, it seems that Singapore continues to have the upper hand and is making bigger inroads into the digital marketplace, despite its smaller stature. “I think the higher level of English skills in Singapore contributes to their advantage,” said Winnie Tsoi, Digital Marketing Consultant at www.wlmedia.com. “Even with internationalisation much of the technical documentation for Internet Marketing standards currently only exist in English.”

Despite Google’s dominance of search traffic, some businesses in the study were found to prefer other tools such as social media and directory sites. The Google Business Directory listing applies in Hong Kong and Singapore but has little or no relevance in the rest of China where Google is banned. With Facebook also off-limits behind the Chinese Firewall, a number of Hong Kong companies appear to be more interested in optimising their Baidu listing. This is a problem for those firms wanting to do business internationally, with Baidu used rarely by a Google-first Europe and American marketplace.

Josh Steimle, CEO of MWI said, “Hong Kong companies are missing out on a lot of revenue by ignoring the opportunity offered by Google My Business listings. It is one of the hidden treasures of online marketing in Hong Kong right now, and the local businesses that move first to optimize their listings are going to have a significant advantage over their slower moving competitors.”

For more information about the WL Media HK study researching the use of internet marketing by Hong Kong and Singapore Listed companies, read the report at: https://www.wlmedia.hk/hong-kong-an-internet-marketing-leader-not/

About WL Media HK
Based in Hong Kong, WL Media HK helps Hong Kong businesses to make the most of their online presence. It offers a range of services from websites to social media, in addition to consulting, training and optimisation.

[“Source-ndtv”]
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Education

Only 1 per cent of the population see education as the country’s most important issue, poll shows

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

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Education and schools are less likely to be named as important than unemployment and housing, Ipsos MORI poll finds

Only 1 per cent of the public considers education to be the most important issue facing Britain today, according to a new poll.

Nearly half of respondents (49 per cent) surveyed in January said the NHS was one of the important issues facing Britain, while 17 per cent saw it as the most important issue, according to the Economist/Ipsos MORI findings.

But only 15 per cited education/schools as one of the important issues – a 3 per cent drop since December – and just 1 per cent viewed it as the most important issue. This was despite a succession of warnings about the state of school finances and the potential impact on pupils’ education.

The findings follow a TES analysis looking at why school cuts are hitting the headlines less frequently than the pressures facing the NHS.

Respondents were asked two questions: “What would you say is the most important issue facing Britain today?” and “What do you see as the main/other issues facing Britain today?”. Their spontaneous, unprompted responses were then noted down.

Apart from the NHS, “the common market/Brexit/the EU/Europe” was the second most popular choice for the most important issue. This was followed by “immigration/immigrants” then “the economy”, “housing” and “unemployment”. These were all more likely than education to be named as an important issue.

Education is a ‘mid-tier issue’

Out of the 10 topics most likely to be mentioned by respondents as being important, “education/schools” was the least likely to be seen as the “most important” issue overall. For the poll, the 970 respondents were chosen as a representative sample of the general population.

Education appeared to be higher on the agenda of Labour supporters than Conservative Party supporters. Some 19 per cent of Labour supporters said it was important, compared with 12 per cent of Tory supporters.

A graph accompanying the poll findings shows that the importance of education in the eyes of the public has plummeted since May 1997, when Tony Blair’s Labour Party won the general election after campaigning for “education education education” and nearly half of people felt it was an important issue facing Britain.

Since then, the lowest point came in May 2009, when only 9 per cent of people said education was important.

Jonathan Simons, director of policy and advocacy at the Varkey Foundation, said: “People can only worry about so many things at once. As certain things become more important, by default other things become less important.”

In response to questions such as those posed by Ipsos MORI, nearly everyone would mention a maximum of three issues, he said, meaning that if the NHS and Brexit were constantly hitting headlines there was limited “space” in people’s minds for education.

He added that, historically, education has been “a mid-tier issue”. Apart from some notable exceptions, such as Labour’s former education secretary Ed Balls, education secretaries have nearly always tended to be younger, up-and-coming politicians, or people heading towards the end of their careers, he said.

Mr Simons could only see education reappearing high up people’s agendas in the event of a “long, sustained” campaign by Prime Minister Theresa May that lasted for several months and resulted in much stronger media coverage of the issues facing schools.

Sarah Kitchen, research director in the children and young people team at NatCen Social Research, tweeted that the findings may be down to the fact that education has a direct impact on fewer people.

[Source:- tes]

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Education

Two-fifths of school leaders blame staff quitting profession for recruitment woes, poll shows

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Almost four in five schools have struggled or failed to fill vacancies this year, new research reveals

The number of school leaders blaming recruitment problems on an exodus of teachers from the profession in their local area has risen dramatically, a new survey shows.

In 2014, just 15 per cent of school leaders said that the rate at which teachers were quitting the job locally was making it harder to recruit, but that figure has jumped to 42 per cent this year.

The study by the NAHT headteachers’ union comes amid growing evidence, unearthed by TES, of heads offering “golden handshakes” and other financial incentives to recruit and retain teachers.

The survey shows that almost four in five schools have struggled or failed to fill vacancies this year.

The latest government figures showed that nearly a third of teachers who entered the profession in 2010 had dropped out within five years – although this rate has not declined markedly in more than a decade.

Government ‘falling short’

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the NAHT, has warned of the “damage” being done to the teaching profession by poor retention rates.

“After three years of warnings by NAHT, the government is still falling short of its core responsibility to guarantee enough teachers of a high enough standard to meet the needs of our growing school population,” he said.

The figures are contained within the union’s annual recruitment survey, which polled more than 1,000 school leaders. This is the third year that it has run the research.

The new data reveals a rise in the proportion of heads citing high housing and living costs as contributing to recruitment problems, from 24 per cent to 31 per cent in a year. One primary school headteacher in London told TES that three of his teachers are leaving at Christmas because of high costs.

But it is also clear that a number of teachers are leaving the profession because of workload pressures. Tim Barnes, headteacher at Alkrington Primary School, in Rochdale, told TES that one of his Year 6 teachers – who has been working there for 15 years – is quitting to become a professional dog walker because she finds the current pressures “difficult to tolerate”.

Increasingly, it has also become more difficult to recruit and retain Year 5 and 6 teachers in his school. Mr Barnes said: “The marking workload, particularly higher up the school, is quite intense. In some cases, teachers are taking home 90 books every day and some stay up until midnight to mark.”

The Department for Education said that the government was investing more than £1.3 billion over this Parliament “to attract the brightest and best into teaching”. But it recognised that some schools can face recruitment challenges.

A spokesperson added: “We are also working with the sector to tackle issues that teachers tell us are most likely to lead to them considering leaving, such as unnecessary workload and poor pupil behaviour.”

[Source:- BBC]

 

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Education

Exam results 2016: Only two-fifths of pupils plan on applying to university, new poll shows

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

8-Apprentices-Getty.jpg

Only two-fifths of school pupils are planning on applying to university as attitudes shift away from higher education amid soaring costs, according to a new poll.

Days after 700,000 students received their GCSE results, only 38 per cent have said they’ll be heading to university, while 30 per cent said they will no longer be applying. A third say they still don’t know whether they will be applying or not.

The findings have come from NotGoingToUni – a site which highlights alternative career and education options for those who do not wish to head to university – which quizzed just over 2,100 young Brits aged 16 and over about their attitudes towards exams and moving forward, all of whom completed their GCSEs within the last two years.

From those who were unsure or not planning to attend university, 41 per cent said they’d rather acquire more hands-on experience, while a fifth said they can no longer afford it. Nineteen per cent were adamant they did not want to move away from family.

Young people’s attitudes towards a higher education have changed considerably over the past year as tuition fees rise beyond £9,000 a year, maintenance grants for the poorest students are axed, and also as the Government makes a controversial U-turn on a student loan promise.

CEO of the site, Sharon Walpole, said it was “fantastic” to hear so many young people are already aware of the various options available to them, and that attitudes are changing around the idea they have to go to university following their GCSEs and A-levels.

Walpole added: “What we want to see is it becoming the norm that all schools and colleges are informing students of all of the options available to them, and providing them with the support they need to get to where they want to be. Tuition fees are high, are continuing to rise, and young people are now realistically weighing up their options about whether they consider the fees are worth the education they’ll receive and the debt they’ll be left with.”

The number of students achieving passes at GCSE fell dramatically this year, despite a record number of pupils retaking their exams in the hope of achieving a grade C, with teaching groups blaming the Government’s recent education reforms for poorer performance.

NotGoingToUni’s survey has come just weeks after a report revealed the amount apprentices earn over the course of their livesis outstripping that of university graduates by up to 270 per cent in some sectors.

Mike Thompson, head of apprentices at Barclays, one of the companies to put the report together, described how the figures show quantifiably, for the first time, that apprentices are getting “a hidden pay cheque” through earning while working.

He added: “This bonus means they can fast track themselves to home or car ownership, as well as through their careers, without worrying about long-term student debt. Apprenticeships should be considered a viable and valuable career path and a genuine alternative to university, and these new figures strongly back that up.”

New statistics from financial education group, The Money Charity, recently highlighted the state of student debt today; the class of 2016 debt bill is well in excess of £41,000 – 35 per cent of the average outstanding mortgage amount of £117,162. The charity’s chief executive, Michelle Highman, said: “We worry these early, formative experiences of debt will leave a lasting legacy.”

[Source:- independent]

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Gadgets News

360fly Funding Shows Broader Startup Plight, Gadget Woes

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

To see how startup life has gotten harder, look no further than 360fly Inc.

The Pittsburgh-based startup, which makes an orb-shaped camera that captures 360-degree video, began hitting up venture capitalists for funding last year just as these investors were pulling back on new deals and slashing valuations of many existing ones.

Add in rising competition from a swarm of other camera makers and a stumbling publicly traded rival in GoPro Inc., and the result was a financing round with many of the hallmarks of a sector undergoing a painful adjustment.

360fly said Thursday it raised $40 million from private-equity firm Catterton Partners, Hydra Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Adidas AG, and existing investor Qualcomm Ventures. The deal valued the startup at about $105 million, the same as the last round nearly two years ago, according to VC Experts, which tracks more than 18,000 private companies and their financing.

The terms in this round stipulated that investors will be paid 1.5 times the amount they invested — before employees and other common shareholders — if the company is sold. If the value of the company in any future financing event falls below the latest value, the investors will get extra shares to ensure they lose no money, diluting earlier backers who don’t have the same provision, according to a company filing reviewed by VC Experts.

“These (terms) are harsh. Much harsher than we usually see,” said Amanda Akin, an analyst at VC Experts.

360fly disagreed with the data provided by VC Experts, but declined to provide additional details. Still, 360fly Chief Executive Officer Peter Adderton said it was challenging to raise the round.

“Were the terms the same? Of course not,” said Adderton, adding troubles at GoPro and Fitbit Inc. influenced investor perception of 360fly. “But it’s not a down round.”

Adderton’s philosophy contrasts with advice Benchmark Capital General Partner Bill Gurley and some other VC investors have been giving startups recently: Accept clear terms, even at lower valuations, to make future fundraising and acquisition offers easier.

“Taking a terms-laden deal is like starting the clock on a time bomb. Your only option is to hit the IPO window as fast as possible,” Gurley wrote in an April blog post. “Otherwise, the terms will eat you alive.”

The new money for 360fly, which brings total outside funding to $57.8 million, will be used to market its new 4K camera, available in stores like Best Buy and Target at the end May. The company also plans to invest in research and development with an emphasis on machine learning.

Spun out of Carnegie Mellon University in 1999 with the name Telemersion LLC, the startup raised venture backing and renamed itself 360fly in 2014. With a staff of 70, 360fly has deals to integrate its cameras into Giro and Bell sports helmets.

Other startups like LucidCam Inc. and Bubl Technology Inc. also make 360-degree cameras as do more established companies, including Samsung Electronics Co., LG Electronics Inc., Ricoh Co., Nokia Oyj and Nikon Corp. All those companies either have cameras out now or will in the next few months.

Startups like 360fly may have a tough time standing out in this crowded field, analysts said.

“It’s hard to build confidence in this space, and it will be even harder for startups,” said Stephanie Llamas, director of research at SuperData Research. “People have a lot more trust in companies they already know.”

 

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Gadgets News

Realme 2 Pro Video Teaser Shows Waterdrop Notch Display, Dual Rear Camera Setup

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Realme 2 Pro Video Teaser Shows Waterdrop Notch Display, Dual Rear Camera Setup

Realme 2 Pro video teaser claims a “game-changing” experience

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Realme 2 Pro has been teased in a video
  • The video teaser shows a waterdrop notch design
  • It also confirms a matte back version

Realme 2 Pro, the next model from the house of Realme, is set to debut on September 27. But ahead of its formal launch, the smartphone has now been teased in an official video. The teaser video, titled “Proud to be Young”, confirms the presence of a waterdrop notch design as well as a vertically-placed dual rear camera setup. The video also suggests more power and better performance on the upcoming handset than that of the Realme 2. Further, it highlights a “game-changing” experience. The Realme 2 Pro is expected to come with a new SoC to could help deliver faster results than the Snapdragon 450-backed Realme 2 that was launched in the country late last month.

As per the shots featured in the teaser video that lasts for over a minute, the Realme 2 Pro has a waterdrop notch that already came on various handsets by Oppo and Vivo, including the Oppo A7X and Vivo V11 Pro. This is unlike the Realme 2 that has a regular, rectangular notch, similar to the one arrived on the iPhone X last year. Also, there are thinner bezels and a slimmer chin than what Realme 2 presently has.

In addition to showing the front panel, the teaser video shows the back of the Realme 2 Pro. The back panel seen in the video doesn’t have the company’s notable diamond-cut design that was a part of the Realme 1 and Realme 2. Instead, there is apparently a simple glass panel that has curved edges and includes the Realme branding. The rear view of the Realme 2 Pro also highlights its all-new rear camera setup that is likely to include two sensors larger than the ones on the Realme 2. Plus, you can easily spot the LED flash module as well as the rear fingerprint sensor. There is a circular fingerprint sensor instead of the oval fingerprint sensor featured on the Realme 2.

Apart from the glossy back version, the teaser video also highlights a matte back variant of the Realme 2 Pro. The smartphone also appears to have a 3.5mm headphone jack that sits alongside the USB port and the loudspeaker grill. Furthermore, it is safe to expect some new colour options, too.

We can speculate that since the launch date of the Realme 2 Pro is still some days away, the company could bring new teasers. Price of the new Realme handset hasn’t been revealed formally, though it won’t be as affordable as the Realme 2 that starts at Rs. 8,990.

[“Source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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Tech Update

Samsung’s New Phone Shows How Hardware Innovation Has Slowed

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Samsung's New Phone Shows How Hardware Innovation Has Slowed

Samsung’s new smartphone illustrates the limits of innovation at a time when hardware advances have slowed.

The new phone, the Galaxy Note 9, will be faster and will last longer without a recharge. But while earth-shattering new features are in short supply, it will carry an earth-shattering price tag: $1,000 (roughly Rs. 68,800).

The minor improvements reflect a smartphone industry that has largely pushed the limits on hardware. Major changes tend to come every few years rather than annually, and this isn’t the year for anything revolutionary in the Note.

The new phone will get some automatic photo editing and a stylus that can serve as a remote control. But the highlights will be a bigger battery, a faster processor and improved cellular speeds.

“You don’t see massive breakthroughs anymore from a hardware perspective,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Creative Strategies. “Everything is a little bit better, but nothing’s revolutionary.”

A 21 percent boost in battery capacity from last year’s Note 8 should translate to more than a day of normal use without a recharge. Samsung has been conservative on battery improvements ever since its Note 7 phone in 2016 developed a tendency to burst into flame, prompting an expensive recall and delivering a hit to the company’s reputation.

Since then, Samsung has subjected its phones to multiple inspections, including X-rays and stress tests at extreme temperatures. The company is also sending phones to outside labs, including UL, for independent safety tests.

“We’re three generations removed now,” Samsung’s director of US product marketing, Suzanne De Silva, said of the company’s renewed confidence in the battery. “This is the right innovation at the right time.”

Although Samsung’s Note phones are large, niche products intended for power users, they offer a preview of what’s to come in the mass-market Galaxy S line. A dual-lens camera, with better zooming, came to the Note 8 months before the S9 Plus got it, for instance. The Note also got curved edges before that became standard on Samsung’s flagship phones.

The new phones will come out August 24. Borrowing from the iPhone’s playbook, the Note 9 will have the same US price regardless of carrier. The starting price of $1,000 is an increase from the Note 8, but on par with Apple’s top-of-the-line iPhone X. The Note 9 will get double the storage, at 128 gigabytes, compared with typical high-end phones, including the iPhone X. Samsung will also sell a 512-gigabyte version for power users for $1,250.

Even though the improvements from last year aren’t huge, Technalysis Research analyst Bob O’Donnell said they will come across as major for those who haven’t upgraded for a few years.

Thursday’s announcement in New York comes about a month before Apple is expected to unveil new iPhones. There’s been speculation – unconfirmed by Apple – that all new iPhones will ditch the home button and fingerprint sensor and rely entirely on facial-recognition technology found in the iPhone X. The Note 9 will still have a fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone. In a jab at Apple, Samsung executives also frequently emphasise that their phones have standard headphone jacks, which newer iPhones no longer do.

The camera in the Note 9 will use artificial intelligence to detect what’s in a scene – whether that’s food, flowers or a sunset – to automatically tweak images to make them pop. It’s much like applying filters with an app, except that the phone will do this itself, much the way Google’s Pixel phones already do.

As with the Pixel, the Note won’t be saving a version without the tweaks. Purists can turn the feature off to get images that reflect what the eye sees – an option unavailable with Pixel.

The camera will also offer a warning if someone blinked in a shot, or if the image is blurry.

The Note’s stylus will now have Bluetooth, allowing people to control phones and apps from up to 30 feet away. This will let people control music or snap selfies just by clicking the stylus.

Samsung also said the popular shooter game Fortnite is coming to Android and will be exclusive to Samsung phones until Sunday.

Samsung also previewed a new voice-assisted speaker, the Galaxy Home, using its homegrown digital assistant, Bixby. It promises quality sound, in a potential challenge to Apple’s Siri-based HomePodspeaker. Samsung said more details would come later this year. Samsung’s current speaker, the Invoke, uses Microsoft’s Cortana assistant.

Samsung also announced a new smartwatch and a partnership with Spotify intended to make it easier to switch music playback between phones, TVs and the company’s new speaker.

[“Source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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Internet

Facebook’s Fifth Annual Diversity Report Shows Female Employees Have Increased 5 Percent in 5 Years

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Facebook's Fifth Annual Diversity Report Shows Female Employees Have Increased 5 Percent in 5 Years

The number of women employees at Facebook has increased five percent over the past five years and there has been a modest growth in the proportion of Asian, Black and Hispanic employees across the company, the social media giant revealed on Friday.

Releasing its fifth annual diversity report, Facebook said people from all backgrounds rely on Facebook to connect with others, and we will better serve their needs with a more diverse workforce.

“The percentage of women globally at Facebook has increased from 31 percent in 2014 to 36 percent today. We have also nearly doubled the number of women graduates we hire in software engineering from 16 percent to 30 percent,” Maxine Williams, Chief Diversity Officer at Facebook, said in a statement.

Women in technical roles have increased from 15 percent to 22 percent; women in business and sales roles grew from 47 percent to 57 percent; and women in senior leadership expanded from 23 percent to 30 percent.

“The number of women at Facebook has increased five times over the last five years. The number of women in technical roles has increased over seven times. This is despite the fact that the number of women undergraduates in the US doing computer science has remained flat at 18 percent,” Williams noted.

Black and Hispanic employees overall increased from 2 percent to 4 percent, and 4 percent to 5 percent, respectively.

Facebook said it has seen steady increases in hiring rates for under-represented people.

“We’ve worked hard at retention as well by creating an inclusive environment where people from all backgrounds can thrive and succeed,” the company said.

The report also stated that Facebook today is one of the best places to work for LGBTQ equality.

“We are happy to share that men and women at Facebook get equal pay for equal work,” said Williams.

[“Source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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Internet

YouTube Kids to Get Whitelisted Version That Shows Only Curated Content: Report

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

YouTube Kids to Get Whitelisted Version That Shows Only Curated Content: Report

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Users said to get option to turn of algorithmic recommendations
  • The app will then show videos handpicked for children
  • It whitelisted version may be released in the coming weeks

YouTube is said to be planning to release a new version of its YouTube Kids service that gives parents the option to turn off algorithmically recommended videos and only display those suitable for children handpicked by a team of curators.

“The whitelisted option of the app could be released within the coming weeks. It’s designed to give parents an option where they can feel comfortable letting their kids watch videos on their own, without worrying that they might end up in the dark corners of the internet,” BuzzFeed reported on Saturday citing a source familiar with the company’s plan.

By giving parents the option to turn off the algorithmically recommended videos, the new “YouTube Kids” plans to curb conspiracy theory videos such as sexually explicit language, profanity and paedophilia jokes that were surfacing on the channel previously.

The Google-owned video platform did not deny its plans for the app but it told BuzzFeed News: “We are always working to update and improve ‘YouTube Kids’ however we don’t comment on rumour or speculation.”

In November last year, YouTube stepped up enforcement of its guidelines for videos aimed at children, the unit of Alphabet’s Google said on Wednesday, responding to criticism that it has failed to protect children from adult content.

The streaming video service removed more than 50 user channels in the week leading up to the announcement and stopped running ads on over 3.5 million videos since June, YouTube vice president Johanna Wright wrote in a blog post.

“Across the board we have scaled up resources to ensure that thousands of people are working around the clock to monitor, review and make the right decisions across our ads and content policies,” Wright said. “These latest enforcement changes will take shape over the weeks and months ahead as we work to tackle this evolving challenge.”

[“Source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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Gadgets News

Google and Levi’s Smart Jacket Shows What’s Coming Next for Wearables

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Google and Levi's Smart Jacket Shows What's Coming Next for Wearables

Google and Levi’s showed off this week a new joint project: a $350 smart jean jacket. While this jacket literally puts tech on your sleeve, it does it in a subtle way that doesn’t require putting another screen on your body. In doing so, it offers a glimpse of what smart fabrics can do and of the evolution of the wearables market – one in which consumers won’t have to wear a clunky accessory that screams high tech.

The Levi’s Smart Commuter Jacket, which was introduced over the weekend at SXSW in Austin, is aimed at those who bike to work. It has technology woven into its fibres, and allows users to take phone calls, get directions and check the time, by tapping and swiping their sleeves. That delivers information to them through their headphones so that they can keep their eyes on the road without having to fiddle with a screen. The jacket should hit stores this fall.

Its smart fibres are washable; they’re powered by a sort of smart cufflink that you’ll have to remove when you wash the jacket. The cufflink has a two-day battery life.

While the idea of a smart jean jacket may not appeal to everyone (especially on a hot summer day), the existence of such a jacket is telling about where the market may be going.

“I think that the commuter jacket from Levi’s is really perfect because it’s focused on a single consumer audience. It has the cyclist in mind and is targeting what their needs are,” said Sidney Morgan-Petro, retail editor at trend forecasting firm WGSN.

She said that what makes the Commuter jacket different from other wearables – and even other smart clothing– is that it’s not necessarily marketing the tech as its main feature, but rather using it to solve problems that everyday people have. Many smartwatches and even other smart clothing can feel like solutions in search of a problem to solve. The Commuter jacket, she said, stands out as a type of wearable for a more everyday consumer who may not be that interested in the tech, but likes the practical features that come with a stylish jacket.

Wearables are expected to be a $19 billion industry by 2018, according to Juniper Research. Products including Fitbit fitness trackers, Android Wear watches and the Apple Watch have helped fuel a rise in mainstream awareness of wearables for the past several years, even leading Fitbit to go public in 2015. But the market for wearables has taken a bit of a tumble in the past few quarters. Fitbit in January announced it had missed earnings expectations and starting cutting jobs because sales were lower than expected.

It’s hard to say exactly what has caused the cool-down in wearables, but one possibility is that the market for uber-techy wearables that try to put a smartwatch on your wrist is pretty saturated. Analysts have pointed to a shift in the market away from the super-functional smartwatch toward gadgets that are a little more focused and better looking to boot.

“Where smartwatches were once expected to take the lead, basic wearables now reign supreme,” Jitesh Ubrani, senior research analyst for the analysis firm International Data Corp., said in a December report. “From a design perspective, many devices are focusing on fashion first while allowing the technology to blend in with the background.”

The partnership between Google and Levi’s speaks to that growing effort between the technology and fashion industries. Several designers have already partnered with the likes of Fitbit and Apple to make their wearables more chic and less geek. Companies including Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren and Under Armour have released smart activewear; seeing a brand as old and mainstream as Levi’s get in on the act illustrates just how pervasive the idea has become.

“The retail opportunity is huge,” Morgan-Petro said. “We’re basically seeing clothes as the future of wearables.”

© 2017 The Washington Post

[“Source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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