Early stages of the market, including interoperability and standardization
A proactive standardization strategy is needed.

Can the wearable market, one of the hottest topics in the IT industry, overcome the chasm (the stagnation period before general public use) and achieve mass adoption?

According to market research firm Gartner, global wearable device sales are expected to reach 274.6 million units in 2016, an 18.4% increase from 232 million units in 2015, and revenue is expected to increase to $17.5 billion by 2019. Furthermore, wearable device sales are expected to reach $28.7 billion this year, with smartwatches accounting for $11.5 billion of that. Smartwatch sales, in particular, are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 30% through 2017.

However, in order for the wearable market to continue growing as expected, it is urgent to resolve compatibility issues and establish standardization.

▲Who will ultimately emerge victorious between traditional wristwatches and smartwatches? Will either device survive, or will each establish its own market? Attendees wearing wristwatches try out a smartwatch at an electronics show.

For wearable devices to become a new growth engine for the ICT industry, various hardware technical limitations remain, including power batteries, broadband communications, and design elements. Furthermore, there is an absolute lack of killer content suitable for wearable devices.

First, their short battery life prevents them from delivering the value of wearable devices that are always on. The lack of a primary battery limits their role as peripheral devices, such as smartphones or network devices.

Due to battery life issues, Bluetooth, a low-power, short-range network, is mainly used, but since it cannot transmit and receive independent data as its own wide-area network, smartphones are acting as a hub for wearable devices.

Design has also emerged as a crucial factor. Wearable devices, which require both functionality and aesthetics, are failing to deliver satisfactory results from both a user experience and design perspective.

Additionally, it has strong platform dependency, making it difficult to utilize across different OS devices, and lacks killer content suitable for wearable devices, making it difficult to effectively link and utilize across various applications.

▲Samsung Electronics released its latest strategic smart wearable device, the Samsung Gear S2, last October. Measuring distance using the 'Golf Navi' feature of the 'Gear S2'

In particular, wearable compatibility issues are one of the biggest obstacles to device proliferation. Platform dependency, such as the inability of Android smartwatches to work with iPhones, is manifesting as smartphone dependency. This is a major obstacle to app availability, application compatibility, and usability. While efforts are being made to achieve platform-independent integration, this is only possible to a limited extent.

Application interoperability of smart wearable devices refers to the ability of different smart wearable devices to provide or receive related services, such as communication and data exchange, and to operate together efficiently using these exchanged services. Interoperability encompasses hardware interoperability, communication protocol compatibility, data and content representation compatibility, and application compatibility.

Proposal of a standard for interoperability between smart wearable applications

Regarding smart wearable application interoperability standards, Dr. Jeon Jong-hong of ETRI presented a smart wearable application interoperability reference model consisting of five layers (Hardware to Application) defined by referencing the OSI seven-layer model (Physical to Application). The five layers of the interoperability reference model, which can also be referred to as a smart wearable stack, are vertically divided into layers according to the level of interoperability required when interconnecting smart wearable devices.

Wearable standardization is also being promoted, but progress is sluggish. Although South Korea proposed establishing a technical committee (TC) to develop international standards for WSD, the committee has yet to establish a technically independent field, aligning with TCs in various fields. The uncooperative behavior of Japan, the secretariat of IEC TC 100 (Multimedia), is also a significant obstacle.

Based on the SMB decision, a wearable smart device expert group (ad hoc group 56) was formed, but due to the sharp conflict between Korea and Japan, no conclusion was reached, and it was decided to reexamine the establishment of a TC for one year.

▲LG Chem developed and unveiled a wristband-type wire battery in October of last year to address the battery issue, which is considered a shortcoming of wearable devices.

Regarding the difficulties in establishing a wearable TC, Han Tae-soo, a standard coordinator at the Korea Agency for Technology and Standards, said, “Recently, Japan is facing two important issues in IEC activities,” and “One is that a Japanese representative is planning to run for the IEC SMB chairmanship, which is scheduled to be elected in October of this year, and so they are requesting cooperation from our country (the Korea Agency for Technology and Standards), which is an SMB member country. The other is that they are proposing to establish a new IEC TC for ‘Life Management of Electrical Components Related to Power Grids’ in January, and are also requesting cooperation from our country.”

Accordingly, the government is developing a wearable standardization roadmap through the Wearable National Standards Coordinator project. 10 to 15 experts participated in the development of a roadmap for each of the six technology fields, identifying 81 key technologies requiring technological development and 139 standardization items requiring standard development in connection with each technology.

In response, a standard coordinator said, “There is a need to implement a policy that interconnects the establishment of a wearable TC with cooperation with Japan,” adding, “There are far more standards to be developed than technologies to be developed, and this roadmap is expected to serve as a guideline for the development of preliminary standards in related fields.”

Dr. Jeon Jong-hong also said, “The smart wearable market is a market where standardization discussions are still in the beginning stages and many issues still exist,” and added, “A standardization approach from the user’s perspective is needed, and an active standardization strategy and response are needed, such as considering convergence applications and IoT application linkage perspectives.”