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No One Is Buying Smartwatches Anymore (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Gizmodo report: Remember how smartwatches were supposed to be the next big thing? About that... The market intelligence firm IDC reported on Monday that smartwatch shipments are down 51.6 percent year-over-year for the third quarter of 2016. This is bad news for all smartwatch vendors (except maybe Garmin), but it's especially bad for Apple, which saw shipments drop 71.6 percent, according to the IDC report Apple is still the overall smartwatch market leader, with an estimated 41.3-percent of the market, but IDC estimates it shipped only 1.1 million Apple Watches in Q3 2016, compared with 3.9 million in 2015. To a degree, that's to be expected, since the new Apple Watch Series 2 came out at the tail-end of the quarter. But the news is still a blow, when you consider how huge the Apple Watch hype was just 18 months ago.
they already have a phone...or a watch. Do we really need a bluetooth phone extension to our wrist or a watch that can freeze up?
There are very few use-cases of these which make sense.
Workout accessory? Hardly adds much.
Wireless extension of phone display? Hardly much better than just looking at the damn phone..
Oh - and especially - as a time piece? Size sucks, Durability sucks. Battery life sucks even more making them pointless for most cases where you want a watch (long trips, hiking, camping, etc.).
Failed experiment by electronics makers selling jewellery. They fell into the classic trap of trying to create a market for something which doesn't actually do anything that anyone cares about.
Anyone that knows anything about watches could have saw this coming. There is a potential here if they can get a watch that does what a watch does now with additional functionality but they've got to get something else right and that's battery life. Watches are JEWELRY first and time pieces second. Most people who don't care for the time keeping abilities don't even wear one anymore because cell phones have clocks now. Apple tried really hard to get the Jewelry side right but IMO failed miserably. This is a fit and finish game with high end precious metals comprising the composition, often with gemstones.
None of the smartwatches satisfy the Jewelry aspect of time pieces. Taking that into consideration and the fact they have atrocious battery life, offer almost no convenience that their phone doesn't already provide and you've got a product that will sell a few as a status thing and rapidly implode as the main market avoids it. There is a future for these things but it's going to be a niche market until they solve the serious limitations in both functionality and battery life.
FTFY
Why should we have to upgrade our watches every year? Maybe people are happy with what they have already?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I stopped wearing a wristwatch 10+ years ago. It was annoying to wear while using a laptop.
There's clock on my phone, computer, car, radio, egg timer.. I don't see the point in carrying extra one on my wrist.
Smartwatches seem even more pointless to me, redundant and limited functionality and horrible battery life.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
It's almost as though a relatively small market got saturated; with some added bite from the (more limited; but substantially cheaper) 'fitness' bands that offer a much lower cost of entry to have an annoying gadget on your wrist and bothering you.
I never would have expected that outcome.
There was a French kid in my high school who had this bulbous digital watch which was all the rage in France.
We made fun of him for it relentlessly.
That's how I knew smart watches were lame.
Where's the APPS guy when we need him?
Remember how smartwatches were supposed to be the next big thing?
Nope.
But do you remember how we told you they were just an early adapter fad, and would remain so until a killer app came along, or at least some more useful functionality than as shipped?
About that...
Yeah...
The market intelligence firm IDC reported on Monday that smartwatch shipments are down 51.6 percent year-over-year for the third quarter of 2016. This is bad news for all smartwatch vendors
Well as we all mentioned back then, perhaps the vendors should now be working on coming up with new features and functionality so the watches would be even more useful, and perhaps spend a bit more effort searching out for those killer apps that still don't seem to exist.
Then they can make those available to the current early adapters that already bought the things, so when asked "How do you like the watch?" they could rant and rave about the awesome things they are doing with it, instead of just replying "meh"
That just might spur more people to buy the things.
It was, as the subject reads, a dumb idea. I don't even wear a watch. If I need the time, I have my smartphone.
Isn't a "smartwatch" a pager with an LCD screen, but strapped to your wrist?
Apple should've known this was a niche product from Pebble's (and LunaTik's) sales. Of course, I say this with wisdom of hindsight. But still, stocks weren't running out for any of those two companies.
Nobody except Asia buys watches anymore.
Watches, smartwatches, health monitors - if you're not actively sick, they tend to be a bad idea.
Research studies have shown smartwatches actually encourage you to self-defeat health and exercise goals, by setting an upper limit on how much you do. Better methods include bar measures (where you start off in Red, go to Yellow, go to Green, and then go Yellow if you exercise too long without water or a rest break), candy systems (e.g. Pokemon Go where you get candy for your monsters if you complete a designated unit, but it doesn't stop adding), and other real feedback cycles.
Also, self-monitoring tends to decrease the reward aspect of the exercise itself.
Plus, seriously, who spends $500 on a fricking wristband?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
And aside from doing the Dick Tracy wrist tv/radio bit (and really - who wouldn't want to do the Dick Tracy wrist tv/radio bit?) - I just don't see this thing doing much. With the right sensor stack, I suppose continuous biomonitoring is possible, but with only a few exceptions I still keep coming back to 'why?'.
The main issue is that any watch over $200 is expected to last 10-20+ years. A smart watch is designed to last 1-2 years. I bought a nice citizen watch 10 years ago, and it still works and expect it to last another 10-20 years. If I go for a smart watch of the same price, its expected to be tossed after 2-3 years.
The smartwatch thing smacked of desperation from day one. They never did anything a phone couldn't except for a handful of specialized fitness things that few people cared about, and those few people could just go buy a fitbit. Hell, the only conceivable advantage was that they were even more portable than phones are, but since you pretty much universally needed a phone for them to do anything useful even that didn't amount to anything.
I want a watch which is my phone and data connection. I want to see basic comm functionality I can use - bluetooth for audio if need be - all the time. I want a mini- or regular sized tablet I can carry with my when I think I'll need to interact with the data - but I want to be instant. When I pull up my tablet (whether it be a 5" Android or Apple handset, or a Surface Pro or iPad Pro), I want the low power BT to kickstart the connection and then ramp up to max LTE speeds (or at least hit the 25Mbps BT 4 spec) without me ever having to manually connect; and roll to wifi gracefully (where available) for data while maintaining the data link with the watch for notification and content sync.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Nobody is UPGRADING their smartwatches because why the hell should I pay $350 to get a watch that has zero features above what I already have? When I had a Pebble Time it did everything I wanted then and the other pebble offerings were useless iterations that either offered a useless feature (lighter and shorter battery).
the Apple Watch 2.0 only really offers waterproofing. no real advances that people would dump another $350+ to replace their 1 year old Apple Watch 1.0
The android watches, well nobody has been buying them, they have always been the last place runners, but their new iterations are all useless. Zero advantages on the new versions.
The ONLY smartwatch maker not with their head up their ass is Pebble. 10 day battery life in the Pebble Time Steel. Apple could have doubled the battery life, Samsung could have doubled battery life.... nope, they are all stuck in the "ZOMG THINNER!" stupidity.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
A drop of 51 percent is significant, yes, but come on - plenty of people are buying smart watches. Just not as many as a year ago.
Right now, fitness is the killer app for smart watches, and that's why Garmin is still doing reasonably well. The Fenix 3 is the bee's knees when it comes to fitness watches, and their other products - the Forerunner 920XT, 735XT, 630, Edge 520 (okay, not a fitness watch, exactly), etc. - are also excellent in their niches.
In comparison, the Apple Watch has some decent fitness specs, but it's aimed squarely at the casual person who doesn't do much serious fitness. It'll do wrist based HR (known to be inaccurate compared to a chest strap), link to a bluetooth chest strap HRM, and that's about as far as it goes; and its GPS battery life is about 5 hours. For cycling, if you want to be serious, you need a cadence sensor, a chest HRM, maybe a speed sensor (if you're going through areas where GPS is poor - tunnels, for example), and a power meter. For triathlon, hiking, or ultra-marathons, you want anywhere from 3 to 20 hours of battery life (and for ultra-marathons, you might even want more than that - look up the Barkley Marathons if you want to see true insanity.)
Sure, all of these are niche markets... but it's because they're niche markets that you need those capabilities. The R&D for a product that will suit one of those markets is only slightly less than the R&D for a product that will suit several, and you'll get a lot more sales from the latter than the former.
Until Apple (or anybody else) figures out how to make smart watches more than a gimmick outside the fitness space, this is pretty much what the smart watch market is going to look like, and that's why sales have plummeted - it was the novelty value that spurred the market with the introduction of the Apple Watch, but that will only sustain a market for a very short time.
I have had an LG Urbane since it first came out about 18 months ago. It is not as geeky looking as most smart watches. It passes for a regular round dial watch since I use a simple watch face that just shows calendar alerts. It was more expensive than the thin and light Seiko it replaced. It is also more useful. I have enjoyed the LG immensely and use it for calendar tracking, Google Fit, flight alerts, maps, etc. I am extremely pleased with it. But I can't see a smart being something I replace frequently enough to make any manufacturer happy.
The battery life tends to be about 30 hours unless I screw up and don't put it in airplane mode when I should. That drains the battery in a hurry. And yes.. it is weird to put a watch in airplane mode.
FWIW I am also happy with my two year old Nexus 6 and won't be buying a new phone for a while either. The new Pixel is just too expensive for the incremental CPU improvement and smaller screen I will be getting. I would rather pay for some home repairs than put nearly USD1000 into a new phone from this generation.
I need my phone to be a phone and my watch to be a watch. Smart watches are just shitty phones. I've already got a phone. Don't need a second one.
In the past that mostly had to do with Madonna, but now he is upset no one uses two way video watches.
I really like my smart watch (Samsung Gear s2 Classic). That said, my wife has gone through 3 different ones trying to find something that has some appealing style and functionality. She's pretty happy with her s2, but it's very 'sporty' looking. We both like the rotating bezel control for the Gear s2 series, but it only comes in 2 styles. Most of the other smart watches out there are a PITA to use. I really wish Samsung would open up their bezel control, because it is very easy to use. Honestly, the best feature I've found is that I get my notifications on my wrist. This means I don't ever have to take my eyes off the road to see what's just pinged me to see if it's something I need to pull over to deal with.
I thought I was the only one that thought these things were the biggest pile of fluff. I'm taking bets on the next over-hyped technologies to fall over:
- Personal Drones
- VR
- Tiny Video Cameras (GoPro-like's)
I'm sure there's more, but these ones both seem to be well over-baked in tech press. That said, there isn't too much on the near horizon that seems fractionally interesting to the disruption smart phones have caused in the tech world.
Bye!
Smart watches aren't ready yet. They should have waited 5 or 6 mores years before setting them free. Much like the Apple Newton, I don't think the tech, at least what the majority is looking for, is there yet.
I want one that looks good, is fully round (no flat tire), has a brightness sensor (the last two appear to be mutually exclusive) and runs Android Wear.
The closest candidate right now is the Huawei Watch. But it's also already comparatively old, so I'm waiting for the next generation.
but at least they ain't dumb enough to buy smart watches
although 40% of American s are dumb enough to vote for trump....
1. Too expensive 2. Too short of a battery life 3. Too easy to break 4. Smartwatches were a dumb idea 5. Most under 40's don't even wear a watch...they have a smartphone. I have a cheap Casio that tells time, within 1 minute per year, 5 time zones, calendar, stopwatch, 30 bucks pretty much unbreakable, 10 year battery life. For everything else, I use my smartphone.
Hypothesis: Smart watches are gifts. They will sell near Christmas time.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I didn't want one either. So much so that when my wife surprised me with an Apple watch for Christmas last year, I could hardly hide my disappointment. Thinking "I really didn't *want* one of these"...
But having used a smart watch for a while now, I absolutely love it. Why?
1. The haptic feedback. I run my phone on silent 24/7, which meant that I was constantly having to double-check that I didn't miss a message while walking around. There's no missing or mistaking the prominent tap from the watch so this problem is solved. No more missed messages and no more randomly checking my phone.
2. The weather. I wouldn't have predicted this one, but having the current weather conditions plus the day's high/low temps on the watch face is super useful. I probably look at my watch for the weather conditions almost as often as I look at it for the time.
3. The general freedom of not needing my phone in my hand. In lots of small ways throughout the day, a well-functioning smart watch is another one of those "living in the future" joys. Sending messages by voice without even pulling out your phone, pausing/resuming podcasts while mowing the lawn, getting haptic navigation directions while having an uninterrupted conversation... a good smart watch is clearly a step forward.
As a former skeptic turned believer, it's a shame to see so many people dumping on these devices without having the chance to really see what they offer.
So they like to buy stuff then change into something else?
Perhaps they can bundle smartphones with 3D TVs
No one? I'm one who's bought 2 Apple Watches now. So there must be another person, I guess, if this survey is at all accurate.
Who wears a watch? That is SO 19th or 20th century.
I know the percentage of the population that works in classified areas is not that large, but none of my coworkers could use them. They can't even wear the "dumb" fitness trackers with very little interaction capability. On top of that, anyone doing physical labor probably will skip them. I'm happy with a nice Wenger mechanical chronograph because it looks nice, and even though it is expensive, I can wear it for decades and don't have to remove it in certain locations.
That may not be dumb -- they may be voting against Clinton which would make them smart. Actually, I think the majority of American voters in this election will be voting against a candidate rather than for one. Both parties put up a horrible candidate.
Very handy (no pun intended) good battery life, only has a few functions but does them well.
A Beowulf Smartwatch cluster?
if it has a screen projector and keyboard projector like Japan phones now then why not improve the hardware by multi-head display automatic projector alignment with a smart projector reflector so you can stand or sit by someone else and project a screen next to theirs that mitigates two shaky wrists from maligning the lanscape mode?
Folks, all of this is from numbers pulled out of some IDC analyst's rear end. Their estimates are no better than SWAG's. I should know, I've had to use their reports in a past life. Sometimes they're accurate, as companies will report otherwise confidential numbers so long as they can't be backed out of the reports. However, Apple doesn't play those games and in this case it's explicitly some analyst's best guess. Most analysts badly misunderstand Apple, and when you misunderstand the biggest player in the market your analysis is almost certain to be wrong.
Also, Garmin's growth was from a very low base. It's easy to grow by 300+% if you start from almost zero.
Coincidentally, I've purchased a Garmin watch in the past year. I wanted a GPS + Heart rate monitor sports tracker for running and cycling, and didn't want one that requires that it be used with my phone. If I have to carry my phone along, then I'd just use it for sports tracking instead of the watch.... I don't see why I'd want to have a "smart watch" that's only smart when it's tethered to my phone. If I get a phone or text message when I'm too busy to take my phone out of my pocket to see who it is, I'm ok with not knowing who it is, I'll check it later.
Ive had several smart watches - but I have gone back to my solar powered time pieces.
I loved my pebble but I found it hard to read as i got older. .....
I occasionally use my Samsung Gear 1 . I dont use the notifications (except weather) = esp. if i think the camera may be handy and i only use a watch for dress occasions anyway
of a smart buttplug is not gonna make it either?
We still don't have the display technology to make a proper smartwatch. Until we have a watch with a display that is continuously on and active (such as a full-color e-ink display that's at least 30 FPS) that can operate for a minimum of 24 hours continuously on one charge, smart watches are going to be a severe compromise from existing watches (digital or analog). Only those that have use cases that really require them, or that want to bend over backwards to integrate them into their lives, will find them useful enough to bother with.
Look at digital watches. The first generation were LED with red glowing numbers, and they only displayed the time when you pushed a button, otherwise the battery would be dead within an hour. Does that sound familiar? Digital watches did not explode onto the scene until LCD displays matured, which were capable of actively displaying real-time data continuously for months on a single battery. That will be the technology that drives smartwatches - whatever display advancements need to take place to allow continuous full-color, real-time data display with a battery life measured in days. Until then, companies like Apple are putting the cart before the horse and using gimmicks like gestures and the like to try and switch the display on intermittently (and hopefully) when the user is needing to see it.
Better known as 318230.
I knew the Apple Watch was not going to work out when Apple offered a 50% discount to their employees and my friend who works at Apple offered me to use his discount to get one. If Apple employees are not willing to buy it at 50% why would the public buy it at full price?
**Life is too short to be serious**
You are correct, except for one thing. Watches are timepieces first and jewelry second.
I totally get the watch as jewelry thing. However consider this, have you ever seen a watch that was inexpensive and didn't fit any arbitrary definition of jewelry? Of course you have, we all have. Cheap watches are a legitimate thing.
Now, have you ever seen someone wearing a watch that didn't work as a timepiece? That only happens to me when my watch battery conks out and I get that replaced pronto. Ever seen a decorative wristband or bracelet with no timekeeping function attempted? Of course you have, except that these are wristbands or bracelets and not watches. They are a different category of thing entirely.
Watches are timepieces first and jewelry second, by definition.
The only way smartwatches will be worth the cost of a smartphone is if they have comparble functionality, since there is not enough real-estate on the display projection holography will be the most likely route. Holography will need to be to the point (size/reslution vs price) as digital cameras before smartwatches are commonplace, so like decades. Then people will wonder why we all packed our pockets with these heavy little screens for so long. . .
You got something that turned out that you enjoy and has a killer app for you.
A week or so ago, there was an article about GPS in cars being something that most people don't like - personally I love it and I would never own a car without it.
Everybody loves something different and there is enough different things out there for everybody to find something that they can't live without. Without being ironic or facetious, it really is a great time to be alive.
I think what the article is pointing out (and was noted in other posts) is that the smartwatch market is now saturated with people who love it and, as they last a few years, there is considerable shrinkage in the market.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Most people have figured out that they carry their phone all the time so the watch is useless.
Some people think that a big platinum or gold looking one or diamond encrusted one still makes them look successful or alpha, whereas it really just makes them look quaint, narcissistic, and backward.
If you're really important, you have a person to tell you the time without you even having to ask.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I used to think Smartwatches were completely superfluous and stupid. Then I started doing a lot of athletic training and running triathalons. My wife got me a Garmin fitness watch for that and it has been essential. After getting it - I still thought the Apple Watch was stupid. Why? *EVERYONE* in my triathlon training groups had the Garmins. They had on-board GPS and would work in the water (to get data for swmimming). Apple watches could do neither. Now - Apple comes out with their second-generation watch. What two new features among them? GPS and waterproofness. So I still love the Garmin software and have all that data in the Gavin ecosystem. As sexy as Apple is - don't want to jump ship. But now - what if the NEXT Apple Watch had cellular support (as was rumored was it slipped going into gen 2?) - so I could call for help if needed - or have people live-track me? What about a camera to grab the occasional shot? Or th ability to listen to my audiobooks while on a run? There may be a niche market - but the market is there. Don't count-out Apple o Garmin, yet!
I guess I'm not a person then. Because I just bought an Apple Watch Series 1. I did so because I wanted a decent heart rate monitor and I figured if I paid double I could get a fairly good one that doubled as a toy. I'm enjoying it just fine, even wrote a little app for it too (getting it published on the App Store was painful, but done). Suffice to say, they're not for everyone, but I like them. I guess that's why they'll go away. Most products I like aren't ideal for idiots and since that's the crowd that gets all the love..... (*weeps softly*)
I'm not sure why but sooner or later someone will come up with a reason ;)
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
You mean, at all.....I think.
The need or desire for a smartwatch went away when people stopped using watches in the 90's.
Also, smartwatches are MOSTLY USELESS devices that do nothing but duplicate features you already have on a smartphone. They are also useless without a smartphone near it.
Smart Phones are so far from what Phones used to be. They're their own class of device and really ought to have a different name entirely, as they're really really far from just being phones now. Same goes for Smart Watches, especially an Apple Watch. If you genuinely only wanted a watch, then buying an Apple Watch would be pretty hilariously misguided, for all the obvious reasons. I recently took the plunge as someone close to me died of a pointless heart attack and I started to feel my age. These devices being ON our skin and fastened to our body have a unique vantage point to enable health-centric apps. I'm now watching my heart rate (and logging to HealthKit) all the time. I keep a decent record of my motion. I'm gaining a little insight in to my sleeping patterns, etc. These medical features are valuable to me. Beyond them, the watch is kind of nifty and handy in small ways. Without the medical aspects, then smart watches wouldn't really get very far. I think we'll find because of the health focus, they have a good fighting-chance to carve out a healthy niche.
I stopped reading when I saw that. They are always wrong.
While smart watches do have their uses, it is still a niche market. Many smart phone users do not want or need a smart watch. Most of the people I know stopped wearing a watch when they started carrying a smart phone because it is pretty easy to check the time on their phone. Fitness trackers existed before smart watches and are a simple alternative at a lower cost, for a segment of the market that might consider purchasing a smart watch. There are plenty of people that still like to wear the more traditional, dumb, watch and never have to worry about charging the watch batteries.
When smart watches first came out, the early adopters ran out the buy one but they are not representative of the markets as a whole. Some of those people might have found the reality of smart watches disappointing and others are just not interested in upgrading yet. The initial rush to buy was unlikely to be sustained but that does not mean the smart watch is dead.
Personally, I only rarely wear my old digital watch but love the fact that I never have to charge the battery and it will go several years before a replacement battery is needed. It is also just about indestructible, waterproof and has a few useful sensors. My smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop and media centre PC provide more than enough computing and time online to be left without a need for a smart watch. Maybe, if they get a huge increase in battery life and get much tougher, I might consider a smart watch sometime in the future.
I know how to make smart watches useful. Have an app that puts four buttons on the face and if you touch them in the correct sequence it erases all the user memory on your phone. Useful for when law enforcement demands you unlock your phone for them.
People actually wanted smart phones. Therefore, they sold. Huge.
People don't actually want big ass watches on their wrists.
And people don't want to strap video displays to their heads.
Once 99.999% of people realized that smartwatches were useless over-hyped bullshit, the word got out and even the gadget-whores stopped buying them.
Smartwatches were a 'solution' in search of a problem that didn't exist. Virtually all of them are gathering dust in drawers, forgotten and forsaken.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The market for everything else looks pretty healthy.
I think Apple just has itself priced out of that particular market,
In Yakima, WA, you stand a very good chance of being mugged if you wear anything other than clothes.
Honestly, I'm ok adopting the smartwatch fad but not particularly sad it could just go away --- because I'd be ok with that, too. I jumped in on the Pebble bandwagon for it's price and pure simplicity of display and notifications.
The only reasons I really did it was to wear a watch again (duh), have some detachment from my phone without having dig that damn thing out of my coat/pants/jacket pocket every 5 seconds to 'see' what notification/calendar event got pushed to me, being able to get updates in a no-phone meeting at work, and it was a nice addition (IMHO) to commutes with not being a dipshit 'phone glancer' while on the road since my hands were already on the steering wheel. Are those great arguments? To me they are. To most, probably mediocre at best.
I guess for the $200 I put into both of the Pebble watches in the last 3 years I'm more than ok with. That's certainly being able to stay "I did it", enjoy it for what it is (and soon-to-be was) and not break the bank or cave getting yet another $500+ device.
A solution in search of a problem, nobody's buying. Huh.
Speak for yourself.
That's too bad. This will probably slow research in this area. I was looking forward to someday having a watch with as much power/space/battery-life as a high end smartphone that could be paired with a keyboard and screen when needed.
...and that is you have to wear a watch.
I was tempted to try a smart watch just to satisfy my techie curiosity, I'm still tempted to get one.
I don't need one, I'd just like to have one to play with and perhaps even dabble in writing an applet or two.
Saw this post and thought I'd go check the 2nd hand market for an Apple Sport 42mm.
Surprisingly I find that there's very little to be saved in purchasing a year old smart watch.
I'd have expected them to be going for 1/2 to 75% of their original price. Not so it seems.
So either I'm looking too soon or they really are holding their value well.
Is the 2nd hand market a better bellwether for smart watch uptake I wonder?
Perhaps the Apple fans rushing to own one caused a mini bubble in the market which has now corrected itself?
i grew up in a time before cell phones — im used to a watch, and after 10+ years of living without one (because of having the time on a phone) — it is rather pleasant having one again. i wouldnt say it replaces the phone, but is a good supplement — i find i dont have to pull out my phone as often, and love the way i can just glance over to see what's coming in without having to haul out a brick.
most of all — its just got to be a good watch — and it still doesnt beat my movado — but the apple watch does its job being a watch, but with nice connectivity for messages and such.
what surprised me is that one of the most used features is just having the weather on the face of the watch — living on an island, and riding a bike — knowing the weather and the time to the boat are everyday practical.
loving the watch, and the fact that i can code for it and make it do stuff if i so desire is great for a geek. :-D
jp (toronto island)
... but their battery lives suck, require mobile phones, etc. I will stick with the old school Casio Data Bank watches.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
My Apple Watch is great. But I shouldn't need to spam-buy watches. It doesn't add capability like a phone, but it definitely is nice. Were these companies expecting to sell me a new piece of jewelry every year? Even every two years seems like too often.
There's a real market for these things, but it won't look like the phone market.
Remember how smartwatches were supposed to be the next big thing?
Mostly what I remember is myself and almost everyone on Slashdot mocking them, on account of being inferior to a phone on most "smart" attributes such as size, battery life, price, and processing power, and inferior to a watch on most "watch" attributes, particularly size, battery life, and price. Certainly they would have a few use cases that would make them worth wearing, but for the majority it would be at best a cool but impractical gadget.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Nobody is buying smartwatches... well, because they are a piece of junk. iWatch feels like some piece of overpriced junk in your wrist. It looks like dam ugly compared to any analog watch. If feels too light too. It is damn overprice on light of that.
Apple did themselves a disservice by releasing the updated watches after only 1 year. They signaled to the market that the watch you buy will be best supported for only a short period of time. You're paying hefty prices for an adjunct to your phone. App developers will follow the performance and capabilities, and the supplanted devices will soon become hobbled in what apps they can run and how well they can run them.
If they slow down their product life-cycle, I'd pay their ask. For buyers like myself, they need to offer something that I can reasonably assume will not go end of sale for at least 2-3 years and also stay supported for another 3 years beyond that. You might respond, "well, the watch is still good after you buy it! They'll continue to support it!," which is not untrue, but see the above point about the app support. You might also say, "they have to stay competitive with the market!," to which I say..
If they don't, won't or can't slow down their product life-cycle, people like me see maybe a 3-4 year usable life-cycle for the product when we make a purchase decision. To get us to put down the money, they need to cut the price. The 42mm (with a sport band) in series 1 is $299, series 2 is $399. The series 2 adds GPS, water resistance, and better screen. Sorry, but I don't want a hobbled series 1 device that'll leave me unsatisfied at the short end of that cycle for $299. Try $150. The watch I'd want, the series two, I'd buy for $250, not $399.
Just my $0.02.
It started right away with "big budget" devices. Devices that were hard to program and had to sell huge numbers to recover their investments. Those devices were then aimed at the "fitness tracker" market and nothing else. Not even displaying the time was a priority any more. Also screens have been to small compared to their sci-fi counterparts and nobody bothered about the input problem. In fact in order to use (=program) all of those computers you had to use a separate computer with a special development environment. Any idea you have for such a device will be eliminated by the frustrating experience of installing that environment and actually doing the programming. Also, since most of those devices run fully fledged bloated operating systems, they needed to recharge quite more often to be useful.
What we would need is a simple system centred around the software a digital watch would usually run, then add hooks to allow people to hook their own code to experiment with the system. This sort of "experimental phase with geeks" is rather important, but the modern smartwatch industry tried to skip it.
The main problem that killed (is killing?) smartwatches is not only the limited use scenarios for them - is that battery times sucks. 24-48hs is already miserable for a phone, let alone a device you are supposed to attach to your wrist. My watch is a Citizen EcoDrive: rugged, accurate and never ever needs recharging.
I have several acquaintances who stopped using their iWatches or 360s just because it is annoying to put it to charge every night next to their phones. Been thinking about buying a 360 from one of them because there're some interesting apps for pilots out there but, in the end, its more a novelty than anything else.
It's true that the battery life isn't very long and it's easier to read the time off a Casio when in bright light. However...
1) I have a flashlight with me at all times, which is very useful for 2:00 AM bottle feeding
2) I can set discreet timers that don't send me lunging for my phone in the middle of a meeting/public talk
3) I can answer my phone right away and then find it instead of digging through my bag/pocket frantically
4) I can carry my shopping list on my wrist and check things off instead of having to unlock my phone over and over
5) Microsoft makes a watch face that creates a very easy-to-read calendar through curved lines of different colours
6) I can leave my phone charging more often.
There's more, but that's what springs to mind right now. And then there are the notifications that everyone talks about. All in all, my Moto 360 was well worth the 99 pounds that I paid for it (on sale).
Those who wanted smartwatches wear Apple Watches and Fitbits already. They only appeal to a small market segment today and that segment is saturated. Apple has sold north of 12 million which in my mind *a lot*. The majority of those I know who bought them will replace them.
Greed is the root of all evil.
I looked at smartwatches recently, wanting to get my sister something she could use to record the voice of the married asshole who's been hitting on her while his wife is at work - and continue to use after that situation has been resolved. I think that when smartwatch manufacturers are putting the brains, software and features of the big thick watches built into something with the size and battery life of a Pebble Time Round, buying one won't seem like a compromise anymore. Every Walmart has for sale a large collection of digital watches whose features would be the envy of the first (pointless) digital watches. Half of 'em will be smartwatches here before too long.
With the continued success of their Kick Starters I'm surprised how small a share they have. I know they're a very small company in comparison to the others in this industry but I've looked into the other watches available and Pebble seem to be getting price, functionality and battery life spot on. Very little compares well for value for money or convenience of use.
Maybe there's a bias towards supporting "indie" tech among my group of friends but Pebble is by far the most common smart watch among them, then again none of them use Apple products so that'll almost certainly skew an already biased sample.
Can't wait to upgrade to a Time 2 next year, my Classic has served me extremely well and been far more useful that even I expected. My phone now feels cumbersome to use with out and being one to put my phone down in the strangest of places I'm ashamed of how often I use my Pebble to find it.
Hey, try this:
1. Mobile phone and LTE data modem (but no WiFi) on a wrist
This is the thing that takes your nano-SIM.
Must have a screen large enough to see the date and time, who's calling you, ability to answer/reject the call, and to show a bunch of notifications - no necessarily all at the same time.
Kind of like will.i.am's dial - don't put any apps or heavy computing power on it.
2. Wireless attached mini tablet (5" diagonal)
This goes in your pocket when you need to go on the Internet while commuting. It will use the watch's LTE connection or normal WiFi to get to the Internet. Can be used to read the text messages. All the usual computing power goes in here.
3. Wireless attached maxi tablet (8", 10", 12").
Same deal as the mini tablet but with a larger screen and even more oomph.
4. Wireless headphones
AKA bluetooth headphones, so you can use the phone functionality in the watch.
Sell 1+2+4 for the price of a current smartphone. Sell 1+2+3 for the price of a current LTE-connected tablet. Sell 3 for the price of a current WiFi-only tablet.
You should be able to use the speaker in 2 and 3 for speakerphone and video call functionality.
BUGS:
I don't know how all this wireless interconnection will be made to work in trade-show context - i.e. the wireless spectrum is so flooded with EM that nothing can communicate with anything, not even when very close to each other. Adding wire options to the watch, besides looking goofy, might not be an option because of available space.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
When smart watches came out, some of us said, "Meh" and that was that.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
If it hurts Apple I am pleased.
... but I'm Brazillian, you know: maybe the trend doesn't even reached here (thank god! Enough electronic waste here!)
I knew that when I was talking with the weasel about buying my smart phone, he kept on and on about this and that and not having to actually take out my phone to use it. All of it--Meh!
I don't want a damn phone accessory, I want then entire thing on their wrist.
I do remember most people here saying they were dumb useless gadgets and once the fad wore off people would see them for the waste they are.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I still wear my Casio calculator watch, what you talking about?
We'll make great pets
It's an analog Timex, water resistant to 50 meters, and I don't need to put on my glasses to tell the time. Perfect for surfing, bike riding, and other outdoor activities, and it looks decent enough I can wear it to work and dress-up events.
Oh, and it cost $40 at Target.
Best Slashdot Co
Those that wanted one, already have their "fashion statement" Others, the smart ones, figured, three hundred bucks or more for a stupid watch, said "NO WAY". When you can buy a DUMB watch, that tells time for 20-30 bucks, and you carry a smartphone 99.99% of the time, plus the dumb watch battery lasts thousands of times longer than a smart watch, why bother. Smartwatches were a DUMB idea.
I just saw this: http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/2.... Maybe Fossil didn't get the memo?
We'll make great pets
They were all UGLY
They were nothing but a bluetooth extension to a phone which is only 12 inches away with a bigger display.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Data point of one.
Smartwatches miss what I need and that's not necessarily a watch. I need a gadget that connects to my iPhone and can be worn around my wrist or ankle. It's only purpose will be to signal to me in various clever ways when my iPhone would ordinarily be making a sound for situations where I want it quiet. And it needs to be smart enough to signal for particular callers in particular ways.
The reason? I can't always keep my iPhone in direct contact with me so the vibrate works. This smartbracelet, to give it a name, could be worn all the time. It wouldn't be big and klunky like these smartwatches and the battery would last for weeks.
Just strap the whole bloody phone to your wrist and be done with it!
There's only one feature of my smart watch I use, beyond telling time and seeing a quick temperature/weather display.
Skipping tracks on whatever music app I'm listening to, without having to deal with my lock screen, or take my eyes off the road when I'm driving, or running.
If someone would make a normal watch, that just had a button for that, they could make a killing.
But those things are still retailing as high as $299. I use its features pretty extensively, a handful apps both built in and downloaded are fairly useful and all-in-all it's a neat little toy, but can't justify it costing more than $99.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
I was a hater who mercilessly poked fun at other smartwatch wearers. Then I found a Samsung Gear S2 refurbished for $99 and that got me to bite. Biggest benefit for me is now I don't have to pull my massive Note 4 out of my pocket as often and can even put it away for most of the daily tasks. When I travel I rely mostly on my watch to get the notifications and decide whether I want to handle them on the phone or can even handle them right then on the watch and that's well worth $100 to me. Seems Samsung got the Tizen thing right in not trying to get the watch to do too much and fail. It's the right size (doesn't look like I'm wearing a frying pan on my wrist), it doesn't look like a "gadget" that's overly distracting, and it gets 2.5 days of battery with my usage. When I considered the value proposition of a smartwatch previously, at $250+ the benefits didn't make sense. But the combination of my use case and the price I was able to get on the "right" device (for me), makes it a win for me. If that was the case more broadly, they would become more widespread.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
applewatch does this. I charge mine on a $9.00 china wing wang wong inductive pad.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"...the next big thing?"
No...but I'm sure Pepperidge Farm remembers.
I have a smartwatch. I love it. I don't see any reason to buy a new one any time soon. It does all of the things I need it to do. I have no doubt I'll replace my cell phone several times before I consider replacing my smartwatch.
I suspect most people in the smartwatch demographic either already own one, or are waiting for the prices to go down.
Most people don't really know how to fully utilize a smart watch, having instant access to pertinent info without removing a phone is absolutely priceless. Examples are people who work with there hands but still need to communicate via, email, text, etc. Healthcare professionals, fitness enthusiast (almost all I know were some type of bracelet style tracker) Someone who wants stock price alerts in real time as they happen, notifications for time sensitive business moves. Many of these things cannot be done on the apple watch but as for android, everyone I know that has tried one for a short while would never go back to wearing an antiquated watch ever again. Look at your wrist, get any kind of info you want...... I remember when phone cameras came out, the same response, or text messages..."just a fad"....
I have a VR Headset (it's not very useful, but is dirty cheap!), you, insensitive clod!
* it's a chinese plastic thing, I thin is one of this: http://vrbox.in/product/2nd-ge...
Apple's watch has lacked battery, gps, performance, waterproofing, and a consistent UI. At $500 for 2 years of useful life, no appreciation, and a required $500+ iPhone purchase, the cost greatly exceeds the value. The learning curve and lost features of the OS update didn't help.
That said, not having to reach into my pocket when I don't need a big screen has been hugely rewarding. I can't imagine not having a smartwatch anymore. Notifications, messaging, phone calls, sports scores, workout activities, and media control are all possible even when hands are full.
I won it in an Engadget giveaway. I like it, but honestly I don't think it's worth the asking price. It doesn't do THAT much, but it comes in handy sometimes. Honestly the thing I use most is the timer. So I'm glad I have one, but I'm also glad I didn't buy one. I do think it got markedly better with the most recent softwares update.
--- What?