The current market for wearables is all focused on the wrist. Fitbit has the most sales in the wearable industry with its slew of fitness trackers, and the Apple Watch is surging up the sales leaderboards. But is this the future of the wearable industry? A lot of pundits and startups don’t think so, many believe the wearable industry will connect everywhere from your head to your toes, using smart clothing. Smart clothing is in a similar spot to the Internet of Things (IoT) at the moment, it’s a catch-all term that sounds jazzy, there aren’t many mainstream products, and …

The Internet of Things (IoT) remains a hot topic, and many mobile developers appear ready to create IoT-enabled apps for new use cases.  A new Evans Data Corp. survey of software developers indicated there has been a 14 percent year-over-year increase in development for mobile devices, which has led to smartphones being the most commonly connected IoT platform. The number of developers currently working on IoT apps has increased 34 percent year over year

South Korea's LG Electronics Inc said on Wednesday it will work with German carmaker Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) to jointly develop a connected car platform to enable vehicles to communicate with external devices. LG, in a statement, said it and Volkswagen will work to jointly develop over "the next few years" technologies allowing drivers to control and monitor devices in their homes such as lights and security systems, as well as in-vehicle entertainment technologies and an alerting system for drivers providing "recommendations" based on real-time situations. Automakers and technology companies have been forming partnerships in recent years, as the …

Heineken is adding fizz to mobile loyalty with the Heineken Live application, which offers users a chance to receive different rewards experiences, such as VIP event tickets, each time they visit one of the brand’s beacon-equipped venues. According to reports, the beer marketer has installed Bluetooth beacons in 120 of its locations across New Zealand, giving locals the opportunity to win big-ticket items such as helicopter transport to a special event and food and beverage vouchers each time they stop by a branded outlet. 

After proving its worth in the e-commerce sector, Alibaba seems set to move into the automobile industry with the announcement of a smart car at an event held in Hongzhou, China. The car, named RX5, was under development and testing for over a year. The tech giant partnered with the country’s largest automaker, SAIC Motor Corp., to make the ‘internet car’. Smart cars, considered the future of automobile energy, are affiliated to an operating system (OS) which serves as the second engine. Till now, some cars were able to access internet using third party software and apps, but with the RX5, Alibaba plans to give …

Speaking to Android Police, a reliable source has told us that Google is currently building two Android Wear devices - possibly Nexus-branded - for release some time after the latest Nexus phones are announced. One watch will be larger, sportier, and more fully-featured (LTE, GPS, heart rate), the other will be smaller and lack the aforementioned mobile data and GPS. We give this rumor a confidence level of 9 out of 10. We are extremely confident Google is in the process of prototyping these in-house Wear devices, and have confirmation of their existence from multiple sources. We are subtracting a point from our confidence because …

Automaker BMW Group is looking to put street-ready autonomous vehicles into production by 2021 with the creation of an open platform with technology partners. BMW Group, along with collaborators Intel and Mobileye, sees the potential autonomous cars hold to make driving safer and easier, with implications for highway driving as well as ridesharing in denser city streets. While many automakers and consumers still see sophisticated self-driving vehicles as a distant dream, BMW is aiming to make them a reality sooner rather than later.

On most mobile devices nowadays, location privacy is an all-or-nothing deal: You either allow applications to track you all the time, or you turn off the location setting and suffer the inconvenience of having to turn it back on every time you use the app. Both Apple and Google have improved this in recent years, adding granular controls to their mobile operating systems that allow users to permit or deny individual apps access to their device's location. But while that might be sufficient to prevent a sketchy flashlight app from snooping on you, it's still not quite enough to stop …

Switzerland has joined a growing number of places around the world exploring the potential of electric autonomous buses, with a pair of driverless shuttles now ferrying passengers around the city of Sion as part of a two-year trial. Other autonomous buses being tested out across the globe include the EZ10 in California and Singapore, the Navia also in Singapore, and the IBM-powered Olli in Washington DC that can even talk to its passengers en route. Much like these projects, Switzerland's buses will take to public roads with local regulators eying a wider deployment of low-carbon, autonomous mass transport. The vehicles will be operated by Switzerland's leading …

Smart vending machines are an excellent example of how the “Internet of Things” (IoT) can affect business models and revenue flow. The vending industry is going through a sea of change. The access to data that is generated by connected devices has changed the way companies can operate and the way in which they generate revenues. Constant connectivity allows companies to offer customers a product utility as a service, as seen in vending machines. With user customization, improved security, smart payments and continuous monitoring of inventory and consumption patterns, opportunities for vending machines to dispense new products in more profitable …