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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.
I find my pebble is handy as a remote control for podcast and music. I like to listen to podcast while out and about (hiking, bike riding, etc) using bluetooth headphones. Having a bluetooth watch means I can adjust the volume and skip back a few seconds (if I can missed a few words) without having to deal with wires getting tangled in backpack straps or my helmet.
At home I have an mpd server. With an mpd client on my phone, I can now skip and pause my music without having to touch my phone or computer with bike grease on my hands or having to keep my bulky phone in my pocket.
Bonus features include being able to tell at a glance if an email or text message is worth pulling my phone out of my pocket or if I can continue with my meeting (I'm IT, so having to leave due to an energy alert is a real possibility), video game or just cooking dinner.
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.
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.