January 20, 2013, Seoul, Korea – Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL, www.freescale ) supports a highly scalable open-source platform to help system designers more easily respond to the rapidly evolving consumer wearable market. This platform provides OEMs with the ease of use necessary to rapidly develop a wide range of wearable product designs based on a common platform.

Unlike other wearable product solutions, this new platform is not limited to a single standard or product category. The highly flexible system-level design kit supports embedded wireless charging, integrates processors and sensors within a hybrid architecture for scalability and flexibility, and comes with open-source software. The wearable product standard platform drives creative designs for various fields such as sports monitors, smart glasses, activity trackers, smartwatches, and health/medical applications.

"This wearable standard platform is one of the end edge node sensors in the Internet of Things and holds immense potential for equipment manufacturers, service providers, and consumers alike," said Rajeev Kumar, Director of Marketing and Business Development for Freescale Microcontrollers. "This new solution is designed to significantly simplify the design and development of new and exciting wearable products." "This enables designers and OEMs to rapidly progress from concept to prototype in line with the speed of market changes," he said.

According to market research firm Juniper Research, retail sales of smart wearable devices are projected to reach $19 billion in 2018 from $1.4 billion in 2013. Juniper Research also forecasted that sales of smart wearable devices will increase to 130 million units by 2018, which is ten times the estimated sales volume in 2013.

The wearable standard platform accelerates and simplifies development by addressing key technical challenges in the wearable product market—connectivity, usability, battery life, and miniaturization—allowing developers to focus on developing differentiated features. This platform features Freescale’s i.MX 6 SoloLite ARM® Cortex®-A9 application processor as its core processing unit, supports the Android OS, and integrates production-grade semiconductors, software, and hardware. Additionally, the BOM-optimized hybrid architecture incorporates Freescale’s Xtrinsic MMA9553 turnkey pedometer, the award-winning FXOS8700 electronic compass, and the ARM Cortex-M0+ Kinetis KL16 microcontroller.

This wearable standard platform was developed through a collaboration between Freescale, Kynetics, and Revolution Robotics. Kynetics provides the expertise for the platform's software, while Revolution Robotics supplies the hardware for the solution. Through this collaboration, Freescale, Kynetics, and Revolution Robotics have developed a scalable, modular platform suitable for various use models in the wearable product market. Customers can use this hybrid architecture-based platform to address various new vertical markets as the market evolves, and develop not only products but also entire portfolios by extending and customizing designs in terms of hardware and software.