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BARCELONA: Wearable gadgets like smart watches and glasses are growing more capable every year, but experts say smartphones will remain ubiquitous for the foreseeable future — not least thanks to artificial intelligence features.

A slew of wearable products and prototypes were on show at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Monday, even as smartphone makers and network operators played up AI integration as making handsets more useful.

Such “new product ranges allow manufacturers to diversify the hopes until now placed in phones” said Cesar Corcoles, an IT and telecoms professor at the Open University of Catalonia.

The trade show in Barcelona will see “prototypes and demonstrations of smart glasses that place a small, very limited screen in front of our eyes”.

Smart glasses have seemed on the horizon for more than a decade, with Google’s Glass headset and camera released in 2013 — although it has since been discontinued.

Meta has encountered more success recently with its frames developed alongside Ray-Ban, offering features including a built-in camera, music playback and voice interactions with the company’s AI.

Yann LeCun, star AI researcher at the company which owns Facebook and Instagram, is often seen showing off the glasses at public appearances.

Worldwide, the market for smart glasses appears to be surging in terms of unit sales, with a 210-percent year-on-year increase in 2024 according to specialist research firm Counterpoint — far faster than the seven-percent growth in smartphone shipments calculated by analysts Canalys.

But comparing the number of devices rather than growth rates, last year’s roughly two million pairs of smart glasses barely register compared to the 1.2 billion smartphones sold.

Counterpoint predicts the glasses market will grow further in the coming years as more producers — from social media giants to smartphone makers — look to claim a piece of the action.

Other wearable categories may need longer to take off, with the recent shutdown of “AI Pin” maker Humane a sign some wearable tech is not yet mature.

Designed to be worn at chest level like a brooch, the would-be smartphone replacement incorporating a camera and mini projector was designed to be used via AI-powered voice interactions but received poor reviews.

Humane has now been sold to HP after the device failed to make the hoped-for impact.

The “AI Pin” was “just not that useful yet”, Canalys expert Jack Leathem said.

Voice-controlled devices are “a cool gimmick, but humans have become very, very used to text-based interactions on touchscreens,” he added — habits it would take a powerful sales pitch to change.

“The most challenging thing is getting people to change their behaviour,” agreed Shen Ye of smartphone maker HTC’s Vive wearables arm. “We still use a QWERTY keyboard because it’s what we’re used to… even though there are probably much better ways of typing,” he added.

Beyond consumer inertia, wearable tech is still up against engineering challenges stemming from its bid to squeeze smartphone-like functionality into a smaller package.

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