Rebecca Liggero talks to Dr. Windsor Holden, Head of Consultancy & Forecasting of Juniper Research about the concept of wearable technology and the opportunities it presents for iGaming.

Dr. Windsor Holden, Head of Consultancy & Forecasting for Juniper Research covered the concept of wearable technology during the last session of Tablet Gambling summit Europe and the opportunities it presents for iGaming, or rather the opportunities that it doesn’t present…at least not yet. “There is so much that needs to be done before we can do anything in this sector”, he said.

In a wider wearble space, we’re finally moving from enterprise focus application and wearables to ones which are being given more primarily consumer space.” Holden said.

At the moment, the market is dominated by fitness wearables but in the future Dr. Holden expects them to be overhauled by wearable watches. Naturally the Apple Watch debut in 2015 has caused some excitement, but according to Dr. Holden, “If you want to drive the wearable market, you need the wristbands that are independent of the handset” (Apple watches will be dependent on the iPhone).

Dr. Holden went through a host of challenges that wearable technology will face such as: privacy issues, consumer safety, battery life, size limitations, regulations, connectivity and technological challenges.

Despite the challenges, if we look five to ten years down the line, some possible use cases in the long term for smart glasses could be: delivering odds and race info in real time and on course, facial recognition in casinos to identify known cheats, and creation of virtual casinos. For watches/wristbands, the use cases are primarily payment oriented.