“It’s still a curiosity for many people,” Vu told the audience during the second day of the Mobile Electronics Fair on October 19.

Vu said he sees the wearables market plateauing at maybe hundreds of millions of users, a far cry from the “literally billions of people using” tablets and smartphones. Strategy Analytics recently published a report projecting 2.5 billion smartphone users by the end of 2015.

To build the wearables market, though, devices must be “truly wearable,” Vu said, meaning that users shouldn’t have to worry about constantly charging the device and should be able to be worn for long periods of time.

Currently, most wearables cater to specific niche markets like atheletes and others looking to track their activity or monitor their health. However, manufacturers are finally starting to move away from the question “what do you measure” to address other useful features, like the Apple Watch’s implementation of NFC payments.

While fielding questions from the audience, Vu told one person that users shouldn’t have to be motivated to put the device back on. If there’s a 1 percent chance a user won’t put a wearable device back on, he said, multiplied over long periods of time, the chances a user won’t use the device becomes very high.

The key in Vu’s view is making devices fashionable and comfortable. He discussed the importance of brands and how people like to be associated with certain fashion brands in a way that’s not true of most technology brands.

Vu seemed to suggest that it made more sense for wearables to be branded by companies like Prada and to be less-power-hungry, single-purpose devices. When a manufacturer finds the sweet spot between fashion and functionality, it might have a hit product.

Vu, for his part, appears to practice what he preaches. The flagship product of Misfit Wearables is the Shine, a minimalist fitness tracker that appears to favor fashion over other bells and whistles.