“Know what a ‘Wearable’ is? Most top tech executives would struggle to define it. Now they’re hoping that Apple will do it for them,” Jens Hack and Eric Auchard report for Reuters. “Next week, Apple Inc is expected to stride into the market for wearable accessories that link wirelessly up to phones and create a template for other firms that have struggled to create products consumers would want to be seen in.”
“Rival electronics makers have been marketing hundreds of wearable products over the past year, but have little to show for it in sales despite huge hype,” Hack and Auchard report. “Executives at Europe’s big consumer electronics trade fair this week in Berlin readily admit to hoping that Apple can crack the missing code for everyone. Where the U.S. innovator leads, its rivals plan to follow by bringing their own improvements or by seeking out profitable niche markets that Apple ignores. ‘If Apple offers its own product, it will expand the market,’ Sung-jin Lee, Director of LG Electronics Inc’s watch product planning team, said in an interview. ‘This is what we wanted,’ Sunny Lee, CEO of Samsung Electronics’ European business told Reuters when asked about Apple’s likely debut.”
Apple’s arrival promises to bring fashion sense and sleek design to a market that so far has emphasized the technology inside their products rather than its outward usability or aesthetics, noted mobile analyst Ben Wood of market research firm CCS Insight,” Hack and Auchard report. “‘We are in the Stone Age of wearables right now,’ said Wood – a self-confessed wearables geek who has 15 such devices strewn on the floor of his office.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The Stone Age of Wearables ends soon.
Related articles:
Apple’s game-changing ‘iWatch’ to allow mobile payments, feature curved display – September 4, 2014
Report of Apple’s imminent iWatch triggers chaos at copycat Samsung – August 28, 2014
Apple to unveil wearable device at September 9th special event – August 27, 2014
Caution, paradigm smashing ahead: Apple may be primed to give ‘smartwatches’ the iPhone treatment – August 14, 2014
Woz on Samsung Galaxy Gear stupidwatch: I threw out the worthless thing after half a day – July 2, 2014
Clueless companies race to debut stupidwatches before Apple defines the smartwatch – January 3, 2014
Jim Cramer: ‘The curtain has closed’ on Samsung’s stupidwatch – October 3, 2013
The Verge reviews Samsung’s Galaxy Gear stupidwatch: Orwellian, unintuitive, oversized, and overpriced – October 2, 2013
Jean-Louis Gassée: I hope Tim Cook had fun goading Samsung to make their Galaxy stupidwatch – September 9, 2013
Stupidwatch: Why Samsung’s Galaxy Gear is a flop – September 5, 2013
Samsung Galaxy Gear watch looks rushed, misses the mark – September 4, 2013
The Galaxy Gear stupidwatch: Without Apple to copy, Samsung is clueless – September 4, 2013
Samsung announces ‘Galaxy Gear’ watch accessory for Galaxy Android devices – September 4, 2013
Reuters telling the truth? What’s with that?
I literally don’t even look at these other products. Moto 360, who cares? Junk. Galaxy Gear? Junk. There will be a pre-iWatch era and a post-iWatch era. Once again the tech industry has demonstrated that they’re completely clueless without guidance from Apple.
Moto 360 or as John Gruber calls it, the Moto 270 (to describe the flat tire effect).
So many questions with not-obvious answers…
Square or round?
Thick for battery or thin for looks?
Expensive Liquidmetal for cache or aluminum?
Leather, synthetic, or metal band?
How many versions for looks and personalization?
Wide or narrow? Futuristic-looking or skeudomorphismistic? $499? $399? $299? $249?
Requires iPhone to be really useful or is still powerful when standing alone?
Fully fleshed out, or just cool enough to draw people in, but missing obvious features priming people for version 2?
Strong enough to sell well for 12 months, or something that will be updated twice a year with frequent new versions?
OS replicating/echoing what people use a smartphone for, or a totally different philosophy on the OS/usage case, making it it’s own thing?
A clear bet the farm effort, or a safe effort, testing the waters?
cachet not cache.
The “Fast Followers” are revving their engines, comforted by the Koh’s of the legal system. The international technology R&D department, otherwise known as Apple, is about to deliver the “next big thing for everyone”, by their own admissions.
So it appears whether they (or we) like it or not Apple IS the R&D Dept. for a clueless tech world. I only hope they get the market all to themselves for a while.
the iWatch is going to be impossibly thin and take years to copy – apple is inventing the form factor and the copycats may not be able to duplicate apple’s manufacturing process.
You mean the iWatch that will be manufactured by Samsung? You are too funny little man just too funny.
Oh so you are the inside man, please do give us the full low down then as you know it all so clearly.
I have an acquaintance who is an Andriod guy. A commercial came on showing that Samsung watch like six months ago. He says, “Damn that’s sweet. Somebody had to do it first.” He’d obviously heard the rumors of an Apple watch, but his statement left me confused. Almost like he was taking mental note that Samsung had made a watch, so no matter what Apple ships, he’ll be able to say Samsung was first. And he was oblivious to the fact that that Samsung watch didn’t seem to do anything useful. At least, nothing that the average Joe couldn’t think of in five minutes.
Fandroid are impervious to arguments of logic where rationalization biases rule the day.
Yes the fact that he seems convinced Samsung did it first when plenty of others best it to it. Apple has never been first, it is simply always first to do it right.
” ‘This is what we wanted,’ Sunny Lee, CEO of Samsung Electronics’ European business told Reuters when asked about Apple’s likely debut.”
In other words… We are out of ideas and need Apple to design something that sells so we can copy it and ride on Apple’s R&D.