A wearable terminal is an information terminal that can be worn like clothes or necklaces and used as is, unlike notebook PCs and smartphones that are simply portable. Typical wearable terminals include smartwatches, head mounted displays and clothes with embedded information terminals. They come in a wide variation of shapes and uses.
Manufacturers started development of wearable terminals in the 1990s. Many products were launched around 2000, but they did not become widespread on a full scale. Subsequently, progress was made in technologies for making the products smaller and lighter, and new use cases such as linkage with smartphones and cloud computing. Entering the 2010s, manufacturers launched smartwatches and head mounted displays one after another, again becoming a topic. At present, wearable terminals gather attention as the next-generation terminals after smartphones, arousing expectations for a variety of applications in accordance with life style due to the diverseness of their functions and shapes.
