Wearable Tech in a Race for the Killer App

Reports from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas indicate that the gadget industry has decided to make 2014 the year of wearable technology. In other words, there's going to be a chaotic proliferation of smart watches and magical bands until someone comes up with the "killer app."

The smartphone market took about 10 years to get to the point where consumers could make sense of what was on offer. Now there's just Android and Apple's iOS. If you want to be generous, there's also Windows Phone, which Microsoft says is outselling Apple in a number of countries but which still has less than 4 percent market share. All the platforms offer a more or less identical list of functions and plenty of apps.

The wearable market offers no such clarity and standardization. "We expect every smartwatch provider to build their own app store, and consumers to experience a lawless jungle by 2015," the Finnish wearable software company Koru, headed by Nokia Lifeblog creator Christian Lindholm, predicted in a December presentation.