Smartwatches will fail. It seems a cool idea, but like Dick Tracy's wrist-phone, wrist-calculators, and wrist-watch computers (they've been around for many years), they won't take off. Most of us stopped wearing watches the moment we got cell phones. Smartwatches are awkward, and an even smaller display than a smartphone - which are currently increasing in size.
Better is a bare headsup device - a "display" as big as you like, without being bigger. Google Glass sans camera (so no privacy concerns til we're ready for it).
It can even have the time in the corner...
EDIT yes opps, s/phone/watch/. Ironically cut/paste was failing on my smartphone, as was I.
I guess you mean "smartwatch". Phones have been pretty successful so far ;)
Anyway, I think I do not agree with you, since I got the early ugly firstrun Android wear device from I/O, the LG Watch.
My experience is that the watch is by no means the next step in the evolution of personal computers or anything. But it is a very useful accessory for the computer you already have in your pocket.
Once you have it on your wrist you notice that
- phone ringtones are awkward and annoying to anyone around you.
- opening and unlocking your phone 125 times per day (This numbers is from Google) just to check for information and if there is something you need to act on right now is incredible annoying.
- voice commands, as limited as this is right now, is only useful if you can trigger it immediately when you need it. The few voice commands I find useful (set alarm, remind me to...) are much much more convenient if I can just say them.
So my point is that the watch is much more useful than a case, and only slightly less useful than headphones. If they start being equipped with more sensors and the cost falls below $80, they will become even more interesting.
This. I'm also seeing battery improvements on my phone by not switching the screen on to check it/the time.
It is by no means a killer device, but useful for glancing (particularly at work, or at the dinner table where it might not be cool to get your phone out and hang up that PPI spam call...)
I gave up on watches when I was a PC service tech. Anything on your hands or wrists was just an invitation for the jagged-edge-fairies to get their claws in.
So I haven't used a watch for about 20 years.
I don't look at my phone anywhere near as often as 120 times per day. I have headphones with play/skip buttons, so that covers about 97% of my interaction with my phone during the day.
The form factor may not be for you however I find my smart watch to be an amazing time saver. That's the joy of diversity... the ability to have products that match our preferences. I never ever wear headphones with play/skip buttons but I understand their appeal for people they work for.
I get the same benefits noted above from my smartwatch, first the Pebble and now the LG. They have become a priceless part of my daily routine.
Out of genuine curiosity, what do you use the watch for that you would associate with time savings?
I've been curious about these things, but haven't been sure as to if they're a product in search of a problem for the current implementation and limitations.
I was gifted a Pebble over a year ago and I admit I thought it was a bit of a gimmick at the time. I did however start wear it out of consideration for the person that gave it to me and the novelty of a new toy. :) (note too that I am an old-timer who still wears a watch regularly)
What happened however surprised me. I found the simple change of having notifications pop up on my wrist was saving me from pulling the phone out of its holder over and over during a day every time it chimed with an email or message. I get a ton of communication during the day but 70% of it doesn't require a response from me immediately... the remaining 30% however does. I was now able to filter incoming messages with barely an interruption to what I was doing at the time.
From there I expanded Apps to bringing up my calendar overview, putting navigation directions on my wrist, using silent alarms (wrist vibration) to alert me during meetings, etc. It allows me to be more connected to my phone, without being more connected to my phone, if you know what I mean.
Now I have since moved to an LG watch and I do like it. No more week long battery life but it will go over a day easily. Lots more gimmicky applications like remote camera control, etc. but also useful things, like ticking items off my Keep grocery list as I wander the store... without holding my phone.
Is it perfect for everyone? Nothing is. :) But I will stand corrected for my early mocking of the form factor. I "don't leave home without it" now.
Smart glasses might be better for some people, but the issue is that no one likes wearing glasses. We developed plastic things you physically press onto your eyeball with your finger because people both (a) need to see, and (b) hate wearing glasses.
Lots of people like wearing a watch. It combines a small bit of practical benefit with the appeal of jewelry/fashion, and it doesn't have the downsides of glasses like pinched noses and ears or the mild social drawbacks (loads of people, my girlfriend for one, hate the way they look in their glasses).
People do wear sunglasses for fashion, but most people would find it uncomfortable and awkward to wear them all the time, indoors and out. Maybe that changes in the future, but right now, I'd bet loads of money on watches over glasses if the contest is between the two.
I enjoy wearing my glasses, as it allows me to see :)
Regardless I think smart glasses are much more useful than a smart watch mainly because of how it can overlay things into your field of vision. Word Lens is a really cool example of this feature(realtime ocr/translation/overlay in your language of choosing).
nice points, I was thinking sunglasses. But my main point was display size: it's a problem for phones, far worse for watches, but no problem for glasses.
Ulimately, yes, smartcontacts or implants, but a long way off. I like eyetracking: only render the bit you're looking at (lower res peripherally). Need super low latency though.
It is really cool to see how history repeats itself in such a predictable fashion. According to the International Watch Magazine, at first wristwatches were seen as a passing fad, with some men even saying that "they would sooner wear a skirt than a wristwatch" [1].
Of course, on the beginning of the miniaturization process, wristwatches were not as good as pocket watches. But they are less clumsy, easier to access, keeps both of your hands free. Most importantly, they are worn visibly all the time, a pretty neat characteristic for a fashion item. Wouldn't it be better if that iPhone 6 you are planning to buy were kept in constant display for the eternal envy and adoration of your peers, instead of hidden in your pocket 80% of the time?
It is hard to try to predict the future. Instead, I like to talk about scenarios. And I cannot discard a scenario where a smartwatch is your primary "identification" device and smartphones, tablets and laptops are only big screens with greater computing power, to be accessed and unlocked through your smartwatch. Is that too far-fetched?
> Most of us stopped wearing watches the moment we got cell phones.
Is there a source for this at all beyond personal experience? I wouldn't expect that to be the case in general - I definitely wouldn't see the smartphone as the successor product to the watch.
I can't even find a correlation that suggests a permanent replacement of watches with phones. MarketWatch [0] have a graph showing a decrease in watch sales from 2007-2009 but that had recovered fully by 2012.
While smartwatches might fail I don't think these manufacturers will have a valid claim that they failed because they'd already ruined the watch market.
This article from Timex claims the USA total sales market for watches, more or less pre-cellphone, was 1.2 billion, because timex had $400M revenue and 1/3 of the USA market.
This article claims the 2013 sales for Rolex were $4.5B and they had ten percent of the world market for mfgrs, and the USA is ten percent of the world market for sales, so a comparable USA total sales market is perhaps "four billion" to one sig fig or less.
So the sales in the USA have monetarily in nominal dollars roughly tripled. This is probably flat when corrected for inflation. On one hand minimum wage has gone from $3.80 to $7.25 which is barely doubling, then again the standard of living has inploded since then because virtually all expenses have increased at a far faster rate. Still to less than one sig fig I'd say the market is vaguely flat when adjusted for inflation.
Then again I read this comment and went to the deli to pick up a breakfast and my banana, strawberry, and tea observations of people in line ahead and behind me, and the employees, and customers at tables, were 17 people, one rather gaudy gold mechanical watch, one cheap digital watch, three bracelets (one looking like a medical alert bracelet). Two women furiously texting away (perhaps to each other). One woman listening to music on her iphone with the iconic white earbuds. One guy talking on unidentified smartphone.
My guess, looking at sales figures, is the market has dried up for anyone not willing to spend $2000+ on a watch, has exploded as conspicuous consumption for $2K+. The Chinese only made 600M disposable watches for the 7.1 billion of the world population who aren't 1%ers, and I suppose thats believable, if 99%er watches are value engineered to only last a year or two for $10 at walmart, I'd estimate I'd only see a couple in my trip to the deli, and thats what I saw.
If they could sell to 10% of the smartphone population, which admittedly sounds optimistic for a wristwatch with a 3 hour battery life, then their theoretical sales could be severely market disrupting. I'm not seeing it happen.
To some extent wristwatches are another cultural trap. Only about 1 in 40 people watch "Survivor" despite it being freely aired, yet its supposedly our defining influential cultural entertainment. So wristwatches could very well "define our culture", at least as we currently define culture, even if only low single digits of the population purchase them. A play on words due to multiple definitions is "don't have to be popular, to be popular". Or rephrased almost noone needs to wear wristwatches for us to describe ourselves as "everyone" wears wristwatches.
I would put very big money on smart watches not failing.
What we're seeing now is something we see often in newish technologies - we take an existing technology and attempt to shoehorn it into another.
A smartwatch should not be an analog to a phone. It also probably shouldn't be a watch. But as happens so often, we say "put phone plus watch = product?"
There's very little here that's exploiting the advantages of a wearable on the arm. When wearables start exploiting their physical advantages, they'll stop being cool tech toys and start being useful.
"we take an existing technology and attempt to shoehorn it into another."
Not financially, which is a HUGE problem for smart watches.
I'm considered an unamerican weirdo crazy, at least in part, because I dropped like four hundred bucks on a smart phone and pay only $22/month just for service, instead of paying $100 on a two year contract like a real American, who can just barely afford a $100/month callphone bill but could never financially survive a single one time $400 expense.
These watch guys think they're going to sell $300 one time expense watches to a people who as a group have already proven they would rather pay loan shark interest rates rather than pony up a couple hundred bucks to buy their phone. This is a recipe for disaster.
The only way smart watches can possibly survive is by being bundled into a contract with AT&T or whoever, say an extra $50 a month for two years on their existing contract which would be a modest 150% APR loanshark-grade loan. You "know" the consumers are not going to be able to pony up $300 cash because they're already self selected as loanshark victims.
Health monitoring stuff is in that category. It could become a thing in itself, especially if other sensors are added. eg blood sugar, not just for diabetics, but dieting, sport, concentration. general health.
Absolutely. But first gen smartwatches have barely-functioning sleep and step monitors. That's not worth $250.
Another huge problem with the self-quantification trend is there isn't much emphasis on doing stuff with that data. There's a fervor about knowing about yourself, but a large gap in utilizing that data.
Smart watches could very well fill that role. A nice first step would be to stop calling them smart watches. Wearables isn't much better.
yes, it's very plausible as a thing in itself. They can succeed without replacing smartphones.
Computers keep shrinking, from mainframes to desktops, laptops, smartphones. I'm curious about the next smaller form-factor, and argue it's not watches, but glasses. That was the claim I meant to make.
Exactly. Out of all the things a smartwatch could do, only health tracking is something that your smartphone can't do. The successful smartwatch will not be a little window to your smartphone, but a high quality health tracker that integrates perfectly with your phone and ALSO shows you the time and notifications.
I'm with you on that, at least in the short term. I honestly don't see a single proper use case why I would want to put some dorky 'smart'watch (which isn't really that smart because it can't work without a cellphone) that I need to take off every night and recharge (maybe even recharge during! the day like with the Moto360 apparently).
How hard is it to take out your phone, which is with you in your pocket or on your desk already anyway to see a notification?
Better is a bare headsup device - a "display" as big as you like, without being bigger. Google Glass sans camera (so no privacy concerns til we're ready for it). It can even have the time in the corner...
EDIT yes opps, s/phone/watch/. Ironically cut/paste was failing on my smartphone, as was I.