Co-written by Brian Jarvis and Janice Cuban.

This article ran in July 2014 on Wearable World News (now readwrite.com).

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The wearables market is the hottest tech trend of the past year and shows no signs of slowing down, yet that’s a lot of performance pressure for an industry expected to reach $30B by 2018. Despite the hooplah, wearables are still a niche market, embraced by early adopters playing with the latest gadgets, technology pundits pontificating on the industry, and brands stalking crowdfunded projects for the next great idea to snatch up. Reality check: Many potholes remain in the road to wearables becoming our next generation of personal and household products.

As of in mid-2014, wearables have made their mark in only two segments: fitness bands and smartwatches. And while Google Glass has gotten plenty of press (and mixed reviews), sales have yet to be seen. But that’s not stopping hundreds of startups and a handful of big brands from developing computing devices that cover our bodies from head to toe: portable heads-up displays (HUDs) to compute, monitor, and entertain; medical treatment embedded in contact lenses; arm, wrist and ring gadgets designed to measure our every waking moment (and slumbering ones too); smart fabrics tracking our athletic performance; and even shoes that can give us directions. And then there are the completely impractical but creative wearables like kid pajamas with QR codes for bedtime stories, or a headset that reads your dog’s mind.

But without supply and demand driving wearables innovation and one or two “use cases” as the reason to develop products, most of these devices—as clever or useful as they might be—are still a stretch for the average consumer to pony up the cash.

So how can this niche market grow to such a huge number in 2018?

In order for wearables to get out of their own way, here are the three obstacles they’ll need to overcome:

CONSUMER CLOG POINTS

Startups and big tech brands alike can create all the new products they want, but it is consumers who will decide if wearables live up to the hype, and right now there are just as many reasons to buy them as not to.

How Many Wearables Are Too Many?

Most current wearables perform one task, which is great for the athlete looking to up his or her running stamina, but not the average person without marathon plans on the calendar. And while simplicity is often the key to great technology design, many of these gadgets must be paired with a smartphone, which in many ways, negates the whole point of making tech “easier.”

“Consumers want apps that do multiple things for them,” as Tracy Chong of Interaxon put it. Wearing a smartwatch to read a text message, a health monitoring bracelet to measure steps taken, and headgear to record movies, well, it gets complicated (and expensive).

Which begs the question: Can a task be accomplished by a smartphone instead of a wearable? If the answer is “yes,” that also presents a wearables barrier to entry. After all, multitasking mobility is the primary reason smartphones have spread like wildfire and are considered a virtual wearable, which leads to the next problem.

Prickly Price Point

Almost 75% of consumers think that wearables are too expensive. Ouch.

Monisha Perkash, CEO of Lumo Body, points out that extensive price testing for the company’s posture sensor led to the conclusion that the sweet spot for consumers for most wearables in all categories is $99. However, for consumers with back problems already forking over thousands into mattresses and pain-relief pills, they’ll pay a premium of up to $149. For smartwatches, the story isn’t much different: Currently the average price of a smartwatch is $214 (not including the smartphone it must be paired with). The net-net is that wearables are seen as a nice-to-have but not a must-have for consumers’ shopping lists.

So Much Data, So Little Relevance

Much excitement around wearables centers on the ability to measure and monitor body performance and get all of those stats. While it’s a revelation to access this voluminous data, what does the information mean to the user? The next step for wearables is to respond to and anticipate behaviors instead of just robo-monitoring.

“Wearables need to be contextually aware and adopt to the user, not the other way around,” said Lief Storer, CEO of Boombotix. In other words translating that “big data” into relevant, actionable insights that will help improve activities and behaviors. Picture a wearable running coach that tells you not only how you’re running incorrectly, but offers intelligent, thoughtful instructions on how to fix it and remember for the future. Or consider that this data might be transmittable to doctors as a diagnostic and monitoring tool for patients with chronic conditions.

Fashion Passion

We’ve heard the phrase “Bluedouche” when Bluetooth headsets came out and more recently “Glasshole” to refer to Google Glass wearers—no one wants to be that person. Daily life with wearables is envisioned more like the film “Her” with its seamless use of embedded electronics on and around our bodies (high-waisted pants notwithstanding).

Essentially, though, there are two sides to the style question: One is that the wearable must look good, reflecting the image a person wants to present to the world; the flip side is that even if the wearable is attractive, most consumers don’t want to sport the same wearable every day or be a fashion “me too.”

Maybe that’s why standby wearables like earphones are getting makeovers with pricey models like the 24K, Tears-On-Ears, and Sound Machine, and gadget maker Withings has designed a smartwatch that resembles a classic Swiss timepiece. It’s also the reason that terms like “intimate computing” have entered the tech lexicon and moves like Apple hiring the former CEO of Burberry to run its retail unit don’t seem so strange after all.

TANGLE OF TECHNOLOGY

Wearables deliver plenty of “oh-wow” moments, from headbands that can read brain waves to DrumPants that mimic the sound of playing drums with hands on your pants. But most wearables have yet to meet a true need that the market will demand once these novelties wears off (typically after 6 months).

The Battery Blues

Here’s a fact: most wearables have short battery life and need charging frequently, more often than a mobile phone. Add to the power management headache, consumers need separate charging cords for many of these devices. Or consider sensors that are embedded into garments: The microscopic batteries these wearables require that can withstand both sweat and washing machines don’t come cheap, and that cost is passed on to the consumer (in upwards of $99 a pop).

Can’t All of Us Wearables Just Get Along?

The silo mentality of the major players in the tech industry like Samsung or Apple that allows them to build their own ecosystems—each with their own unique devices, platforms, and operating systems, is creating further friction in the industry. And that’s not including all the startups with their own respective platforms.

Given that most wearable devices are tied to a smartphone, what happens when a consumer falls for the latest smartwatch from Samsung but has an iPhone? “With so many APIs and platforms, people will have to work in the sandbox together,” says Steven Holmes of Intel. “Everyone has their own idea and is running with it, but no one is sharing intelligence on what works and what doesn’t.”

Brands, in turn, may resist aligning themselves with one ecosystem if it restricts their ability to sell products to another. Google’s recent announcement of their intent to launch their own line of wearables may only serve to muck things up even more.

The Almighty House of Apple

All eyes are on Apple—the most notoriously walled-off tech garden of them all—which has announced its own set of wearables slated to arrive this fall: smartwatches, home monitoring gear, health tools—the works. Many brand-loyal consumers will buy these products simply because it’s Apple; if the iWatch, for instance, becomes an overnight success, it could be a game-changer for current watch leaders like Pebble or Samsung. On the other hand, if Apple misses the mark with a faulty design or lackluster sales, tech pundits may say the world is not ready for wearables after all. “Does the space look as cool as we think it does?” asks tech evangelist Robert Scoble. “We’re all waiting for Apple to answer that.”

THE DATA DILEMMA

It’s a given that we already live in an unsecured world—30,000 sites are hacked every day according to Forbes—but that doesn’t mean that consumers won’t expect wearables to provide heightened levels of security. If anything, the pressure on companies to respect their customers’ privacy will increase now that the data in question has become “life data”—heart conditions, blood pressure, or as with Google Glass, the ability to monitor real-world actions. Consumers have shown themselves willing to give up some degree of privacy in exchange for free services, but at what price?

Ownership Issues

As the large amounts of data that wearables store gets more personal, it also becomes more important to those we don’t want accessing it—think hackers, health insurers, and companies marketing to us. As it stands now, it’s unclear who “owns” all of this data, but according to Bing’s Stefan Weitz, consumers as individuals can claim very little of it. With few federal regulations governing wearable data, the question of who will have access to it grows even murkier. “Unless we’re super responsible about using and monetizing data, it’s a very dangerous slope,” Weitz says.

Big Data = Big Profits?

Many brands, in fact, view wearable data as the golden ticket to just that—monetization—a sentiment echoed by tech leaders such as BrickSimple founder Det Ansinn, who says consumers are already bombarded with ads on every digital front, and won’t tolerate unwanted promotions coming in “on your wrist or in your eyes.” One alternative revenue stream is for wearable brands to sell customer data to marketers, who can then solicit those same customers on other platforms.

But this type of business model raises more questions than it answers. Says Philippe Kahn, CEO of Fullpower Technologies: “Imagine how people will worry about insurance companies getting their personal health information, if they’ll be able to tell if you have marijuana in your system or if you’re female and once terminated a pregnancy. Do people want that?”

As the debate grows louder, the Electronic Privacy Information Center has expressed concern that growth in Internet-connected devices is placing too much power over consumer privacy into the hands of private companies. Sonny Vu, CEO of Misfit Wearables, argues that consumers need to start demanding ownership of their data much like their relationship with their own money at a bank. But the fact remains: The proliferation of wearable devices—and the data inside them—is spreading much faster than concerns over their ability to protect privacy.

“WEAR”ING the CROWN

Whether wearables end up as footnoted fad in tech history, turn into a successful niche market for certain applications, or go full-scale usability with consumers remains to be seen. Either way, it is the job of the wearable technology innovators to create products that meet a high threshold: to be stylish, priced right, ensure our security and privacy, and most importantly, be useful.

As Redg Snodgrass, CEO of Wearable World put it, “2014 is both the year of consumer disappointment, and the year we get it together and build great projects,” he said. “I think consumers are ready for wearables, it’s the wearables that aren’t yet ready for consumers. But we’re working on it.”

* All quotes were taken from panel discussions during GLAZEDCon 2014.