Wearable displays at USFPD 2014
March 2014 – At the NPD Display Search USFPD conference they discussed the hot topic of wearable devices. The talks were presented by Pebble, 4iiii, Qualcomm and Martian, in addition to the overview by NPD. While the market for wearable devices is large, the small size of the displays and the number of options available for display type still has the winning combination of technology and features as a still to be decided as there is no perfect technology.
Display Technologies for Wearable Devices
The wearable marketplace is an interesting one for tech as it is defined as fashion first, function second. In this respect, NPD reports over 300,000 different watches on sale at Amazon, including over 1500 models from Casio alone. The trouble with fashion based designs, is the rapid shift is styles. These designs marketplace for the wearable devices is the watch-phone, fitness tracking, training, sensors, near-ear systems, and as a smartphone accessory.
The Qualcomm discussion focused on quality of experience for the Wearable and IoT marketplace, while the other speakers focused on the evolution of the IoT wearable market in various vertical sectors. The discussion on price and volume, however kept coming back to – it is a small display on a Sq Inch basis (not function) and the economics of mfg these displays on state of the art large format fabrication facilities has yet to be determined.
