Wearable technology is coming to the workplace, and sooner than you might expect. That is the takeaway from a survey, “The State of Enterprise Wearable Technology,” that APX Labs commissioned this summer. APX Labs makes the Skylight operating system, designed to support enterprise applications for wearable technology, such as smart glasses and smart watches. Several manufacturers, telecom providers and utilities are developing or already running proof-of-concept (POC) evaluations for wearables applications.
Zogby Analytics, an independent market-research firm, conducted the survey in June 2015. It asked 200 IT leaders and C-suite executives from industrial sector companies, with as few as 500 employees to upwards of 5,000, to respond to a range of questions related to wearable technology and workplace applications. APX Labs incorporated the study’s results into an online white paper.
Nearly every company that responded to the survey said it was evaluating wearable technology applications, and 79 percent indicated they’ve begun pilot tests this year, with more than half reporting that they plan to start tests in 2015.
“As a business leader, the best news is that I’m not late to the market—it’s just taking off now,” says Brian Ballard, APX Labs’ CEO and co-founder. “One thing that surprised us is that 93 percent of respondents are evaluating wearables. We have a good understanding of which companies are using it, but [with the] early projects, you only hear about them once they leave the walls of the company.”
Ballard says plenty of reports have analyzed the entire spectrum of wearable technology products and applications—just this week, International Data Corp. (IDC) said it expects 76.1 million wearable products will be shipped this year, up 163.6 percent from 2014—but those reports always include consumer products. APX Labs commissioned the survey in order to better understand the growth of wearables in enterprise and, more specifically, industrial applications. Companies in government, nonprofit, education, professional services, media, hospitality, health care and financial services were not surveyed.
Ballard asserts that “people who are sitting at a desk are already well served” by technology. But on the other hand, he says, “the more blue-collar, the more you’re going to [benefit from] using smart watches or smart glasses.” He makes one important exception: white-collar workers in sales roles and others who spend more of their time out of the office and can a see quick return on the use of smart watches that allow them to be more responsive to potential sales.
“The biggest surprise was the number of respondents who said that they are running smart watch programs,” Ballard says, referencing the use of watches capable of messaging. “We knew of a lot of projects using smart watches, but our bias was that their value would not be as strong as glasses. However, [smart watches] do solve a need [in the workplace].”
That need could be receiving work orders or notifications that an employee can read without having to drop what he or she is doing. Running software such as APX Labs’ Skylight (which offers a module designed to run on watches), a worker can move through a workflow by referring to step-by-step instructions conveyed via a smart watch.
Conversely, a smart watch could serve as a means of receiving text messages that direct workers to a computer terminal where they can more easily respond. “For a lot of workplaces, smart watches could replace cellphones,” Ballard states. “They have become the modern pager, alerting you that something needs to be done so you can respond, armed with your subject-matter expertise.”
Some workplace applications might also use smart watches to collect a user’s movement data through the watch’s integrated accelerometer and gyroscope. This could be done to conduct various ergonomic studies, or to analyze an employee’s movements while he or she performs certain tasks.
When respondents were asked what specific models of smart watches they were using or testing, Ballard says, the Apple Watch and the Samsung Gear watch were neck-and-neck. However, regardless of the type of watch used, survey respondents cited the lack of robust data-security protections as the main barrier to smart watch adoption.
That being said, the survey results show that smart glasses are seeing the biggest growth in industrial applications. Smart glasses have built-in two-way cameras and microphones that enable hands-free video conferencing, as well as augmented-reality capabilities—overlaying digital information atop a wearer’s field of vision to help him or her view important information, such as assembly instructions.
Sony, Epson, Google and Vuzix are among the companies that are selling smart glasses for enterprise applications. While the survey showed that respondents are eager to try many models (75 percent are evaluating multiple styles), Google was by far the most common smart glasses vendor, used by 87 percent of respondents.
Naturally, APX Labs hopes to use the survey as a platform for attracting new customers for its wearables software platform. “Some companies are building their own POC internally before they look to [launch any applications],” Ballard says. “In doing so, they might hire a large integration partner, which may or may not be a partner of ours.”