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No Love From Ars For Samsung's New Smart Watch
Despite the number of companies shipping or promising them, smart watches aren't the easiest sell, and Ars Technica's review of Samsung's entry illustrates why. Despite all the processing power inside, the watch is "sluggish" even for the kind of at-a-glance convenience features that are touted as the reason to have a phone tethered to an (even smarter) phone, and for the most part seems to weakly imitate features already found on that phone. There are a few features called out as cool, like a media control app, but for the most part reviewer Rob Amadeo finds little compelling in the Galaxy Gear.
Hands up all those who've been desperately waiting for a 'smart watch' to stick on their wrist?
Yeah, thought not.
... is like home automation. It's always "just about to explode out of a niche market and go mainstream". Specifically to the wristwatch: this device has more or less ceased to fill its original segment of "functional timekeeping, optionally alarm-playing device that's always with you because it's on your wrist" - that functionality is filled by the cellphone, which is also always with you and has a lot more functionality. Watches these days are considered jewelry, not tools - you wear them occasionally to go with nice clothes to achieve a specific aesthetic effect. (This line of thinking is not original to me, by the way, I first heard it when reading some strategic marketing training materials, and have since heard the same story - with credible market research justifications, several times. It seems to pass the sniff test, especially once I walk down the street and look at a few hundred wrists to see what's on them). Given this, the market segment that actually finds the "80s calculator watch" aesthetic to be appealing is pretty limited, and I say that as someone who owned and loved my calculator watches, FM radio watch, "space invaders game" watch, and B&W TV watch in the 1980s. It certainly isn't close to the size of the cellphone market, by orders of magnitude. This whole activity of creating smartwatches is simply a saturated market flailing around to create the Next Big Thing. Throw some hardware out there, see if someone (probably a startup) comes up with a use case that sets the world on fire, acquire startup, profit. In the meantime, hype the widget and milk it for PR exposure time.
Folks, like many expensive watches, this is a fashion item, not a solution to any particular problem (other than how to fleas money from rich yups). Like a Rolex. It's jewelry.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Excellent point. Apple hints, companies shoot their wad, consumers are "yawn", Apple learns from consumer reaction, releases killer product, samsung pays for Apple's consumer research, silly samsung!
What you are suggesting--creating something completely new out of thin air--is "invention," not "innovation." There is a reason why we use two different words to describe these concepts.