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Wearables Still Slow To Catch On in the United States (axios.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The use of wearable technology devices -- like watches, glasses and fitness tracking bracelets -- will grow 11.9 percent next year, eMarketer predicts, with the growth rate continuing to slow compared to previous years. Smartwatches will drive the bulk of wearables growth, but the number of people who use wearable technology will still be less than 20 percent of the population. Experts suggest wearable adoption will slow due to cost and unmet user expectations. Still, others, like analyst firm IDC, predict that U.S. wearable use will continue to climb, doubling in size by devices shipped 2021, just at a slower pace.
The main question is why: why in the world would you want to wear your computer?
Most consumer-oriented 'innovation' these days revolves around generating a solution prior to identifying a problem. The software-startup market is plagued by this, but for some reason, our collective bullshit meter is turned off when evaluating the usefulness of software. Every time you turn around, there's another "Tinder for [x]" or "Uber for [y]" being touted as the latest and greatest.
We seem to respond differently to something tangible, though. Adoption is slow because most of us recognize that the current offerings of 'wearables' don't pose a significant enough improvement in our lives to justify purchasing them.
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Smartwatches will drive the bulk of wearables growth, but the number of people who use wearable technology will still be less than 20 percent of the population. Experts suggest wearable adoption will slow due to cost and unmet user expectations.
It's not about the cost. It's about the fact that they don't solve any problems for most of the people that might consider buying them. Until someone cracks the code on devices that actually do something that smartphones cannot they aren't going to see widespread adoption. There also is the fact that most of them cannot be used as fashion accessories outside of certain very geeky circles.
Look, I should be the ideal demographic for a wearable. I exercise, I love gadgets, I have the disposable income to buy such gadgets. But there literally are none out there that solve any real world problems for me. The Apple Watch, Fitbit, and equivalents don't do anything I actually need 99.999% of the time. (plus I don't like wearing a watch) If I don't wear it during exercise (and I typically don't) there literally is zero utility in them for me that my smartphone doesn't already provide. Wearables are basically small sensor suites, sometimes combined with what is basically a fancy pager. Not useless but definitely niche.
Who would want continual, total, unchecked Surveillance of everything a person does? Not to mention runaway marketing!
Are they actually catching on any faster anywhere else in the world? Does Europe or China actually care about wearables?
The main question is why: why in the world would you want to wear your computer?
Wrong question. People basically do that already. Smartphones rarely leave people's side so for all practical purposes they are wearing it. The question is what does the wearable do for your that the smartphone you already carry does not? There are a few niche uses but none that apply to most of the population. For most people the smartphone accomplishes all the same stuff and quite a lot more. There just hasn't been a killer app for wearables yet.
I'm speaking about my personal tastes here. I don't claim to be representative of the general public.
I've been using a Pebble for years now, and find it very nearly indispensable. Since Pebble but the dust, though, I've been keeping an eye out for what to replace it with when it dies.
I can't find anything that meets my needs. The existing mart watches all suffer from the same flaw -- they're trying to be, essentially, "smartphones on a watch". In order to do that, they have to make serious sacrifices: they cost an arm and a leg, they have abysmal battery life, and they're much too large.
So currently, it looks like when my watch dies, I'll not be replacing it at all. The wearables market is simple not producing anything that actually meets my needs.
I even stopped wearing my dive watch (Citizen Promaster Aqualand (with a metal band replacing the horrible rubber one ) because it needed expensive battery replacements which cost $50 for battery change and predssure test every year.
What exactly is the purpose of a dive watch if you are not actively diving? I wouldn't wear one either but I'm puzzled why anyone would start to wear one.
If you could build even a low powered computing device that had that feature, it'd be a winner - because it would be handy having even a subset of the features a smartphone has, always available at your wrist.
I doesn't matter how little power it draws if it doesn't solve any actual problems the wearer has. Right now all wearables are basically compact sensor suites combined with a fancy pager. If you don't have a need for one or both of those things then a wearable is going to be useless to you especially in circumstances where it is practical to carry a smartphone.
I want to like them, but I just haven't found some amazing need or reason to purchase any. I always have my phone, because it does things better than any small wearable does. My inlaws all have fitbits, and my wife has an Apple Watch, but really I don't have a reason/need/drive to use those things or my phone has a better option. Maybe seeing alerts and texts on my wrist would be convenient, but that's the only thing I see as useful. And that is sort of accompanied by a shrug.
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I think cost is definitely a big part of it.
I don't think so for most people. You could literally give me an Apple watch and I still wouldn't wear it. It's not that I think it is a bad device. I just have absolutely no use for it and I'm not alone in that. I own a fitbit (a gift) and it never gets used. I think for most people it's not about the cost/benefit ratio. It's that the benefit = zero.
I haven't worn a watch in years because I have my smartphone.
My compelling reason to wear a computer (other than the smartphone unobtrusively in my pocket) is ... ?
It's not for the tracking. An instantaneous heart rate readout is a measure of whether you are taking it too easy or about to send yourself to the hospital. For those who are fitness enthusiasts they can probably estimate their heart rate even without the monitor. And even if not, if you're in good condition, you're not at high risk of a cardiac event. On the other hand, those whose conditioning is poor really should track heart rate during exercise. I'm not talking about time-series plots. Just "Hey, I'm 50 years old and this thing says my heart rate is 190. Maybe I should slow down." Or "Hey, I'm 20 years old and I took this class because the instructor is cute, but my heart rate is only 10bpm above resting. Maybe I can do a little work."
Quite frankly, who is the target audience? Hipsters are already buying them anyway, but there's even a limit to what techno junk they buy. Geeks won't touch something like this with a ten foot pole 'til they can eliminate the vendor lock-in and the total surveillance.
And, well, there isn't really that many other early adopters of technogadgets. If you want to sell something like this to the masses, they have to see a clear benefit, and there simply isn't one that their cellphone can't do satisfactory already.
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To me, they are pretty much a gimmick. I've worn a watch for almost 40 of my 50+ years. When a "wearable" watch has a battery that can last at least a month, costs less than 100-150 dollars, I MIGHT think of purchasing one. For now, my overly large Casio Illuminator, less than $50, works just fine, and has a battery that lasts for YEARS. I carry my phone with me, so everything else it right on my belt.