Adam Maguire

Yeah, a fairly loose category used to really describe any piece of technology that, as the name suggests, you wear or you attach to yourself or your clothing.

And, you know, the selling point generally is one of two things.

As you say, it's often, you know, a way of keeping track of your health or your well-being, your activity, your steps, your sleep.

Or it's a kind of middleman between you and your phone.

So in theory, you don't need to keep picking it up to check every time it pings.

You can have a quick look at your wearable, see if it's important or not.

And for a time when you said wearables, you were really talking about smartwatches and fitness trackers.

But in a very short space of time, it's exploded into a whole array of other products.

You can have a smart ring that monitors your vitals, your movements.

You have continuous glucose monitors, which are kind of like what some people with diabetes use to keep track of their blood sugars, where it kind of goes a needle under the skin and it keeps track of your energy usage during the day and your intake.

There are the smart glasses, the likes of the Meta Ray bands, which use cameras to see around you and they have small speakers to tell you what's happening and play music and so on.

Future versions will also have a little screen projected to show you what's kind of like a heads up display that you see in a video game.

There's AI smart pins that you clip onto your top and that you can talk to and interact with you.

Many Bluetooth headphones now are wearables because of how much more they do beyond playing music.

I even came across a company that has $600 smart socks that track your stride and how your foot lands when you run to help improve your technique.

So if you happen to have a few hundred quid spare.

Not a waste of money at all.

Yeah, I know it's hard to pin down an exact figure.

And of course, it depends on how broad a definition you want to give the term wearables.

But I found a couple of projections saying the market is anywhere between $100 and $200 billion of value this year, which is a big range.