Future of Digital Reading (from your wrist)

Apple Watch will change the way we read

After months of rumours and speculation, Apple finally unveiled their first smartwatch at a media event in Cupertino, California this week. Not only did Apple show off their first wearable device, but it also succinctly demonstrated the company’s ability to keep a secret. Whereas analysts had almost without exception expected this product to be called the iWatch, this long awaited tech product is simply entitled the Apple Watch.

Wearable technology has yet to really attract a core audience as of yet. While Apple’s big rival Samsung has already released the Galaxy Gear series, smartwatches have yet to really capture the public’s imagination; a recent article in The Guardian indicated that eBay is doing a roaring trade in discarded smartwatches. But the entry of Apple into the niche could be a potential game changer.

Research published by NextMarket Insights suggests that smartwatch technology is set to go supernova in the near future. The market research firm estimates that the growth in wearable devices will be exponential, with annual smartwatch sales growing from 15 million units in 2015 to a monstrous 373 million devices by 2020. Add into this mix other popular wearable devices such as Google Glass, and it is clear that wearable technology will become part of everyday life in the near future.

Of course, mobile technology is already massive, with the number of mobile devices on the planet already roughly equal to the number of people. In fact, in most of the so-called developed world, mobile devices already outnumber people. And this trend will only become more cemented as the next revolution in the Internet, the Internet of things, goes online on a widespread basis.

Mobile technology is, of course, associated with convenience, and it would be hard to contest the notion that they have improved the quality of our lives. Shopping, listening to music, playing games, communicating with friends, gambling…the list of activities which can be carried out at any time with mobile devices is now seemingly endless.

But as mobile Wi-Fi speeds increase and such a huge number of mobile devices are utilised by people on a daily basis, certain logistical difficulties arise. It goes without saying that one of the primary uses of any mobile device is reading text. And while the trend for smaller mobile devices offers convenience, increasingly reading large text documents on small screens poses problems for users of these devices.

This is where summary tools like Skim.it can be particularly useful. Skim.it rapidly and automatically creates short summaries of webpages, called Skims, so that they can be easily read and digested on any small screened mobile device, wherever in the world you are. In many ways, it is the ideal solution for a world in which we demand more and more functionality from our mobile devices, but for the devices themselves to be increasingly compact with smaller screen sizes.

The Apple Watch is scheduled to hit the High Street in early 2015, and given the queueing around the block which usually accompanies an Apple tech release, it seems likely that this smartwatch will catch on sooner rather than later. For those that wish to get the most out of the Apple Watch, Skim.it could just be the ideal companion.