This week, Apple is expected to come out with a smart watch – which most people think will be called the iWatch. This is just as eagerly awaited as Apple’s first large-screen smartphone, the iPhone 6. Will the iWatch be paired with the iPhone, letting you send messages, make calls, and run apps? What are the health parameters it will track? We will only know all this Tuesday at 10 am PDT (10:30 pm in India and Wednesday 1 am in Singapore) when Apple streams the launch event live.
What we do know for now is that the entry of Apple into wearables energizes an already hyperactive space. So far this year investors have pumped over US$500 million into wearable startups, and the figure may well cross the US$1 billion mark before the year is out, according to data compiled by venture capital research firm CB Insights.
Wearables took off in 2011 with an investment of US$283 million, compared to only US$25 million the previous year. There has been steady growth since then, but this year has seen another spike. The US$502 million invested so far is already way more than last year’s US$362 million.
Much of the action in this hi-tech area is understandably in California, and the entry of the Cupertino-based Apple will accentuate this. But Asia has seen a number of smart moves lately, such as Baidu Eye, a Google Glass rival from China’s top search engine.
Just last week, Dubai-based Tupelo chose to launch its activity tracker mymo in India, which is in the throes of a smartphone explosion. It will compete with the homegrown GOQii Band, which recently raised angel funding from Neeraj Arora, business head at WhatsApp, and Marco Argenti, vice-president of mobile at Amazon Web Services.
South Korean startup Ybrain, which is making a headband to tackle Alzheimer’s disease, just raised US$3.5 million in series A funding. And a number of other wearables, like gesture-detecting thumb-ring Fin from Kochi’s Startup Village, virtual reality headset ANTVR, and coin-sized Bluetooth device Gecko from Bangalore’s Connovate tech saw huge traction on crowdfunding platforms.
The CB Insights data shows in fact that more two-thirds of the deals are in the early stages, because the industry is still maturing. But there have been a couple of biggies too this year – Facebook’s US$2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR and GoPro’s US$3.1 billion IPO.
Now Apple’s entry into this space heats up wearables by several degrees. Already, in anticipation of the iWatch, the Samsung Gear S and LG G Watch R came out close on the heels of the Moto 360 from Motorola. What’s more interesting, from the point of view of startups, is the potential for another rush of investments into wearables as they become the in thing, thanks to Apple and the rest.
(Top image: Flickr user Brett Jordan)
Apple’s iWatch is just the icing: $502M invested in wearables this year
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