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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.
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.
I would want to wear a computing device - I just don't want to have another thing to charge each night.
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.
Now I still have a dive watch, but it's an eco-drive one that has fewer functions (no depth gauge) but has the advantage in that it is solar powered so never needs a battery change.
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. That convenience is negated however, if you have to worry about keeping it charged all the time.
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 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 ... ?