The future of smartwatches means greater choice, and a Burger King style ‘have it your way’ approach, according to Qualcomm’s head of wearables.
Pankaj Kedia, who heads up Qualcomm’s wearables division, believes a convergence of traditional industries with technology will be the main way wearables will change over the coming years.
“We are seeing a range of industries converging with wearable technology: fashion + tech, luxury + tech, sports + tech, enterprise + tech, health + tech, pets + tech," he told Wareable in an interview.
"Each one of these wearables sub-segments is based on unique use cases and corresponding technology advancements,” he said.
Qualcomm recently announced its new wearable W5 processor. It’s a low-power platform, which is designed for a wider range of wearables than the do-everything smartwatches we’re familiar with today.
Pankaj Kedia also told us that in the future, we’re more likely to use dedicated wearables that talk to one another – rather than single do-it-all devices. That could include footpods for step counting or run tracking, or smart garments to measure biometrics like temperature.
"Wearables will work better together with your phone and your earbuds. Instead of having one device, maybe the functionality will get distributed across multiple devices," Kedia said.
“We think of wearables as 'head-to-toe,' he continued. Over time they will get more connected, and they will be more intuitive and natural to use.”
“We are excited about each one of these convergence trends. We are investing in technology to accelerate each one of these trends. We are working with a range of customers to bring wearable products across these segments to market.”
Pankaj Kedia will be speaking about the evolution of wearables beyond smartwatches at our Wearables London event on 26 October 2022 at TechSpace in Shoreditch. You can sign up for free tickets here.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.