Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to the office, split-personality smartphones, LCD art and a shirt that monitors sleep patterns are examples of technology that all make marketing communications brand JWT’s list of Things to Watch in 2012 – Technology, as part of its annual year-end forecast.

 

The Things to Watch in 2012 – Technology highlights technology that will transform businesses around the world. Below are technologies to watch that will have the most impact on retail.

 

To access the Top Ten Trends for 2012 report, click here.

 

More flat surfaces are becoming screens and more screens are becoming interactive. Increasingly we’ll be touching them, gesturing at them and talking to them — and becoming accustomed to doing so as part of our everyday behaviors. This is opening up novel opportunities to inform, engage and motivate consumers. Examples include:

•Interactive mirrors in changing rooms, with which consumers can try on items, request assistance and snap photos to send to friends.

•Tabletop Screens: Barneys in New York City recently installed touchscreen tables in their restaurant, allowing diners to shop while they eat.

 

With the mobile device now an “everything” hub and content accessible through the cloud, businesses will need to adapt to BYOD culture. Employers are scrambling to formulate BYOD policies as more workers bring their own devices to the office.

 

“Turn your screens into art,” proclaims U.K. startup s[edition], which has signed up A-list artists like Tracey Emin to produce limited-edition digital works accessible via mobile devices, PCs and connected TVs. And in 2012 Samsung will produce “digital canvases” — high-res screens designed for displaying artwork, to be distributed by Planar Systems.

 

We’ll see garments help wearers monitor their bodies. Nyx Devices will sell the Somnus shirt, developed at MIT, which can monitor sleep patterns. Sportswear brand Under Armour has the E39, a shirt with a removable sensor pack that provides body data like heart rate and temperature, which wearers review on their mobile device. A Jawbone bracelet similarly provides activity and sleep data. Reebok is developing concepts like leggings with accelerometers for measuring distance, and AT&T says it plans to sell bio-tracking clothes for athletes, first responders, military personnel and senior citizens.

 

As employees increasingly use their personal mobile devices for work, more services will enable people to toggle between business and pleasure while keeping them distinct, reducing the need for multiple devices. In the U.S., AT&T’s new Toggle allows users to easily switch from work mode to personal mode.

 

Perhaps the most buzzed-about tech launch of 2012 is a TV from Apple. It’s all just rumors and rampant speculation as yet, most of which involve the company introducing a television in the second half of the year that would sync with other Apple devices, stream from the Web and allow gesture controls. The product, one of the things Steve Jobs had been focusing on, could help to disrupt a new category.

 

Variations on this have been promised for a while. Now, technology that allows people to try on clothes without leaving home is coming to market. Using augmented reality via a webcam, startups such as Clothia make it easier for online shoppers to see how they look in garments they like, pair these with clothes they already own and share results with their social network.

 

As e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retailing integrate and overlap, shopping will entail simply clicking — buying products from a PC or mobile device — and then collecting the order at a physical location or having it immediately delivered. Multi-channel buying will be faster and more streamlined, with less time in lines and shorter waits for online shoppers. Some supermarkets are setting up displays where shoppers scan QR codes for the grocery items they want, then have them delivered or pick them up in-store. We’ll also see click-and-deliver for in-store shoppers who want different sizes, shorter waits or less heavy lifting.

 

As more businesses store more customer and proprietary information in the cloud, the threat of hackers accessing scores of credit card numbers, pending patents and more will prompt a rise in cloud security concerns and services that claim to be a solution. Companies are already selling security measures to big businesses, and Google, Verizon, Intel, McAfee and Microsoft have all joined the Cloud Security Alliance, dedicated to best practices for cloud security.

 

As smartphones become pervasive, so too will security issues. App usage, mobile browsing and mobile payments all put personal data at risk. The Android system, the top target of malicious software, saw a near-fivefold increase in malware between July and November. As the risk rises, computer security firms like McAfee, Symantec and Sophos are ramping up investments in mobile security, as are manufacturers (Samsung, for instance, is offering the Secu-NFC chip for NFC-enabled phones).

 

Tap-and-pay technology faces a chicken-and-egg problem, with retailers reluctant to foot the cost for terminals without clear shopper demand, and consumers entrenched in their ways. Watch for the companies behind the technology to offer both groups more reasons for adoption, such as lower retailer fees on contactless purchases and loyalty rewards for participating consumers. 

 

The next generation of kids entertainment combines tablets and toys to create a more physical-and-digital interactive experience. Toys that feature embedded sensors can communicate with an app on the tablet, like Disney’s new AppMATes range, which pairs toys based on characters from Cars 2 with an iPad game that turns the tablet into a road surface.