Who wants a smartwatch?

11 years ago

“The big trend in computing this year is the move from staring at your phone to glancing at your wrist,” Rory Cellan-Jones writes for BBC News. “Once the Apple Watch is released in April, the smartwatch sector will really take off. Or at least that is the received wisdom.”

“But some figures released this week by the research firm Canalys should give us pause for thought. They show that just 720,000 Android Wear devices were shipped in 2014, out of a total of 4.6 million smart wearable bands, which include fitness trackers such as the Fitbit and the Jawbone Up,” Cellan-Jones writes. “To be clear, the Android Wear platform was the big new thing in smartwatches in 2014, launched at Google’s I/O conference with lots of hoopla along with new products like the Motorola 360 and the Samsung Gear 2.”

MacDailyNews Take: Why would a raft of stupidwatches, produced only in order to drive a stake in the ground where they can claim “first” before they start infringing on Apple’s patented intellectual property and trade dress, give anyone pause about Apple Watch’s potential?

“But it seems hardly anybody was interested in having one of the watches. Google gave away tens of thousands of the devices to I/O attendees and to its own staff, so the number of people actually buying one with their own money was even lower,” Cellan-Jones writes. “Meanwhile, the Pebble smartwatch which really kickstarted the whole idea a couple of years ago had sold a total of one million by the end of the year – great for a start-up business, but hardly earth shattering.”

MacDailyNews Take: Because they’re mediocre garbage; just like personal computers before Macintosh, MP3 players before iPod, cellphones before iPhone, and tablets before iPad.

“Having worn an Android Wear device on and off over the past few months I think I know what the problem is,” Cellan-Jones writes. “The gadget in question, the Moto 360, is the best-looking of the latest smartwatches but I still can find little reason to remember to put it on each morning.”

MacDailyNews Take: The problem is that these stupidwatches, like the Moto 360, aren’t designed for the user, they are designed to provide chronological deniability for the companies that produce them before they embark on attempting to knock off the Apple Watch.

On the back of Apple Watch’s case, a ceramic cover with sapphire lenses protects a specially designed sensor that uses infrared and visible-light LEDs and photodiodes to detect your heart rate. Apple Watch uses this sensor, along with an accelerometer and the GPS and Wi‑Fi in your iPhone, to measure myriad types of physical movement.

“Of course, the argument goes, all that will change when the Apple Watch arrives. A JP Morgan analyst is predicting that more than 26 million will be sold this year, which would instantly make it as dominant in this sector as the iPod was in MP3 players. With 400 million people owning the kind of iPhone that would be compatible with the Watch, that does not seem an outlandish forecast,” Cellan-Jones writes. “So I am convinced that Apple will be the giant of the smartwatch sector within a couple of months. What I’m less clear about is whether clever watches are anything more than a niche product for gadget fans and fitness addicts – unlike smartphones which are becoming essential for everyone.”

MacDailyNews Take: Some people are imagination-challenged.

The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant… Apple is unlikely to make much of an impact on this market… Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won’t make a long-term mark on the industry. – Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg, January 15, 2007

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last month:

With iPhone, Apple changed the fabric of our everyday lives: All around the world today, you see people constantly pulling phones from pockets and staring at them. With Apple Watch, Apple will change behavior worldwide once again. A quick glance at your Watch and you’re off. No more smartphone zombies. Watch and see.