MWC Key Trends

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   Jide Sobo, Head of Mobile at MEC Interaction

   It’s just dumb glass

Hardware continues to be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, and the big excitement is around the services that can be accessed on the device, rather than the device itself..

Samsung’s S7 is a definite evolution of the S6, with waterproofing being the main improvement.

LG appears to have picked up where Google left off with Project Ara, by releasing the LG G5, a revolutionary modular design allowing the bottom of the phone to be removed, and additional modules to be added. For example, adding a professional camera attachment,  allowing manual focus and zooming, or an audio unit, designed in conjunction with Bang & Olufsen.

Brands and Wearable Tech

Jide Sobo, Head of Mobile, MEC Interaction

The last week of September saw Social Media Week come to London, and with the tag line of Re-imagining Human Connectivity, it was the perfect opportunity for MEC to host an open session on Wearable Tech.

For me, one of the hardest things to grasp, about Wearable Tech, is exactly what we mean by it. We have been wearing varying forms of technology for centuries. Things like watches and glasses (the traditional type, not those made by Google) are both forms of technology that we are all familiar with, so perhaps we mean Connected Wearable Tech. And where do we draw the line between “wearing” technology, and simply carrying it? I think we’d all consider a jacket with an integrated iPhone to be Wearable Tech, but what makes that different to simply carrying your iPhone in your jacket pocket?

However you define it, Wearable Tech is big business, worth somewhere in the region of $2 billion. Of this, Fitness Trackers account for around $330 million and are the most popular devices. Other types of devices cover areas such as Eyewear, Clothing and Medical. Individual devices range from the potentially useful (Smartwatches) to the frankly bizarre (shoes that tweet, anyone?).

It’s clear that this is a big, and varied, market, but what does it mean for brands, and how, if at all, can they use wearable devices for marketing purposes?

Firstly, let’s simplify things slightly and confine ourselves to thinking about wearable devices that have some form of digital screen and internet connectivity. The obvious route is to treat these as another digital screen and look at ways to transpose our beloved PC and smartphone formats to them. However, the sheer number of different physical forms for these devices means that there is no standardisation, making the production of creative both costly and time consuming. Add to that the typically tiny screen size, and we can see that this is not the sensible route to take.