I was talking to a colleague a number of weeks ago and the topic came up of where mobile was headed now that smartphones/tablets have become “commonplace”. The three areas that seem to get a considerable degree of focus is wearables (whose hype will be even further boosted if Apple releases the rumored iWatch on September 9th), Google Glass, and Bluetooth Low Energy (the catchier-named “iBeacon” to you iOS types). As a mobile architect, trying to keep up with all the things going on with mobile, I try to keep the deluge from being overwhelming by focusing on those mobile technologies that have enterprise applicability and that clients may come to Perficient seeking expertise. Therefore, I told my colleague that I had dismissed both Google Glass and wearables as more consumer-focused and that my focus was on the possibilities of iBeacons in the enterprise.
However, after a number of subsequent conversations with other mobile architects and articles such as “Salesforce.com sees wearables catching on with customers, partners” has caused me to rethink my position. While I am not confident in Gartner’s claim that by 2017, wearable devices will drive 50 percent of total app interactions, I 
do believe there is a place where having access to data on your wrist (rather than digging into your pocket for your cell phone or having to have a tablet in one hand) or a headset will have advantages to various classes of enterprise users such as those who require hands-free access such as industrial (warehouse, transportation, etc.), healthcare or in the case of one enterprising firm, replacing access key cards with a wearable.
The challenge for mobile architects and enterprise IT in general is to understand how wearables could provide an advantage to the business (by actually going out and observing how warehouse workers may be using ruggedized tablets now rather than clipboards or rolling computer kiosks and how a wearable could provide an even more productive work environment) by starting to take a look at this technology. This means short R&D initiatives with minimal investments in both hardware and developer time (taking fail-fast to a new level) and developers open to new approaches in terms of screen size, data input, even further optimization of enterprise data access over what is needed for smartphones and processors/memory. In addition, after the issues that firms have had with BYOD in relation to security and mobile device management, determine if wearables create issues that smartphone access to the enterprise did not already expose. If so, better to address it now rather now in an R&D mode rather than later, when you are creating a true business application. The final issue of course is to determine which platforms will break out with many new watches (Apple iWatch, Moto 360, Samsung Gear ) being released and all of which are jockeying for position.
