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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.
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.
the other issue with watch as jewlery for all smart watches, in my mind, is the software. 10 years from now my Ulysse Nardin will still have value and 20 years it may even appreciate. 30 years from i will give it to my son. 2years from now the iwatch will be out of date and no longer supported.
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.
Yup. When the Apple watch came out, I took my Rolex purchased in the 70s to a jeweler for cleaning and refurbishment which cost 2x what an Apple watch would have cost. I gave it to my son as a graduation gift. The current value on that watch was 5x what I paid for it. Might be a wash with changes to the value of a dollar, but that item will still have value in 2-3 years when the Apple watch would have been dropped into a bin as junk. The HP-01 watch from the 70's was a better product than the Apple watch, by the way I also had an HP-01 back then. Kind of sorry I didn't keep it. I wonder if an Apple watch buyer will every feel the same way after 40 years?
Also, when Apple decide they don't care about the Apple watch any more and shut down the servers that enable it to work, it could well stop functioning altogether; many pieces of modern tech are like this. If their servers are offline they just don't work any more. This isn't going to happen with your Rolex.
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