Necessity of General-Purpose Operating Systems for Wearable Computing Environments

Abstract

The wearable technology is carefully expected as a next generation business platform which can lead to changes from the smartphone-based hardware and software market. In this paper, we consider whether wearable computing environment with unlimited potential would require an operating system or not by comparing with other computing environment such as a general-purpose computer. In addition, a brief history of wearable technology and the necessity of studying about operating systems for highly merged wearable devices with software systems will be discussed. We also review the features of existing operating systems in different computing environments and discuss the elements that a wearable operating system should have.