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Apple Is Back To Being the World's Top Wearable Maker (techcrunch.com)
Apple is once again the biggest selling producer of wearables after its third-generation Apple Watch, released in September, helped it pip China's Xiaomi to the post. TechCrunch reports: The new device, Apple's first that connects to the internet without being tethered to a smartphone, took the U.S. mobile giant to 3.9 million shipments in the recent Q3 2017, according to new data from Canalys. The firm estimates that the gen-three version accounted for just 800,000 shipments, due to supply issues, which bodes well for Apple coming into the lucrative holiday season. That figure was a big jump on 2.8 million shipments one year previous. It also gave Apple 23 percent of the market, putting it fractionally ahead of the 21 percent for Xiaomi, the Chinese firm that was briefly top of the industry for the first time in the previous quarter. Apple's wearable division has enjoyed something of a renaissance this year, grabbing the top spot in Q1 for overall wearables the first time since Q3 2015. CEO Tim Cook said in Apple's most recent earnings report that Watch sales were up by 50 percent for the third consecutive quarter thanks to a focus on health services. As for the others: Fitbit took third in Q3 2017 for 20 percent, while phone makers Huawei (six percent) and Samsung (five percent) were some way behind in rounding out the top five. In proof of considerable fragmentation within the industry, "other brands" accounted for a dominant 25 percent, according to Canalys' figures.
> The new device, Apple's first that connects to the internet without being tethered to a smartphone [...]
About damned time. I'm currently wearing a Gear S that's been able to do that since 2014.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The top wearable maker has got to be Durex or Trojan.
now im just waiting for apple to make a non-smartphone based on the LTE watch hardware/OS. i wants my dumbphone!
I own an Apple Watch, but I only know of two other people in my circle who have one - and one of those is my wife.
I do see them around occasionally - but it's quite obvious it's a niche market. What's anecdotally more notable is that I see significantly fewer fitness trackers than I did a couple years ago. I suspect that a lot of people simply gave up on them; and at least some of the remainder replaced them with a smart watch.
#DeleteChrome
Gruen (Australian ABC program that debates how the advertising industry influences you) spent about 5 minutes on the iWatch.
It said their initial marketing campaign positioning it as a luxury item failed. They couldn't compete with the Rolexes and Breitlings of the world.
So they have done a major re branding, positioning it as a life saving device.. literally they showed an online ad by apple (only had 1Million views) having real users telling stories about how the watch saved their lives!
Apparently its working.
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Man I wish Pebble didn't screw up. The market is full of toy smart-watches.
I wanted the apple watch, but it's too big and has too little battery life.
Which is funny because I bought the iPhone and thought it was too big, but I wanted longer battery life as well.
I actually find that the FitBit has a usable battery life, but even then, I opted for the fitness tracker, not the watch because I didn't like the size of the watch.
What Apple should do, is find a way to put the battery in the strap.
All itâ(TM)s features are great and good enough for me but boy the battery life really sucks. They really need to add kinetic charging or whole room charging or fuck-it both. We have the technology.
But I'm living in a >1 million people city in Germany, where most people haven't yet gone full retard.
We're working hard on catching down though.
But on an even more serious note: Who the hell is /stupid/ enough to boy that crap? That's even below "voter" level stupidity!
Keeps your wallet Emp-Tay.
while I doubt fitbit is getting rich from that "some guy did 6,800 steps today" money.
Remember that a lot of countries still don't have universal true healthcare (unlike a sizeable chunk of Europe, Canada, etc.)
and that includes the US (and a few other developed countries aren't quite there yet like Switzerland).
There, healthcare is still managed by for-profit companies.
Their main concern sadly isn't to spread the cost across an as large population as possible to diminish the financial hit of an individual having an unexpected medical problem (that's the whole purpose of an actual, real insurance),
their main concern is generating as much profits as possible (like any for-profit company), and dividends for their share-holders (if it's publicly traded).
They mostly do it by trying to reject as many applicants as possible who have risks of having actual health problem, and trying to attract as many healthy people that will never get sick ever in their entire life.
The kind of data gathered by sports-tracker can be used to feed whatever complex big-data analysis pipeline they use to help them predict which are the cheapest clients. Meaning that they are ready to pay quite a lot of money to Fitbit, Apple, etc. in exchange of collaborations in data gathering.
(And give something stupid and shiny, like a 10% of the monthly fee of the health plan, or even a one-time 50% of the smartwatch's price, to persuade the client to sign and accept health data sharing with the health insurance company)
So yeah, in the end Fitbit *CAN* get rich from that "some guy definitely isn't doing a lot of steps on a regular basis", by reselling it to health insurance companies.
People can receive measurable health benefits from wearables
(BTW, how much it benefits health and if it actually measurable isn't clearly proven yet.)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I learned something today!