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People Still Aren't Buying Smartwatches -- and It's Only Going To Get Worse (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Wearable technology still isn't catching up. Despite a year full of exciting new smartwatches, tech-enabled clothing or jewelry, and fitness activity trackers galore, the growth of the wearables market is still on the decline, according to a new report from research firm eMarketer. In fact, the entire category is being overtaken by smart speakers, at least during the 2017 holiday season. "Other than early adopters, consumers have yet to find a reason to justify the cost of a smartwatch, which can sometimes cost as much as a smartphone," eMarketer forecasting analyst Cindy Liu wrote in the report. "Instead, for this holiday season, we expect smart speakers to be the gift of choice for many tech enthusiasts, because of their lower price points."
Maybe it's because I don't want an accessory on my wrist that offers almost no advantages over the cell in my pocket, meanwhile costing the same as a nice watch but looking like an 80's calculator wrist watch.
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The Pebble hit it right - it did just enough, and the battery lasted a long time on a charge.
None of the crap the fancier watches do is worth having to charge them so frequently.
Based on supplier-estimates, so perhaps not the most precise way to measure potential sales:
https://www.phonearena.com/news/Going-strong-the-Apple-Watch-is-en-route-to-set-another-sales-record-in-2018_id100638
I've got enough distractions without another one on my wrist. One that I have to charge up every day. One that doesn't do much without the phone that it is paired with. I like watches - real watches with automatic movements. Little mechanical works of art. Not some stupid little redundant blue tooth toy.
To me, wearing a watch at all was always uncomfortable and troublesome, and barely worth the effort just for being able to have a timepiece handy. Upon getting a mobile phone which told the time, I happily gave up wearing a watch. In smartwatches, I see much the same thing as the old-fashioned kind: it's an inconvenient thing strapped to the wrist that doesn't do anything that the phone more conveniently out of the way but still easily accessible in my pocket does.
There are arguments to be made regarding ease/convenience of contactless payment - ie not even needing to get the phone out of one's pocket, but I find that offset by needing to twist the back of the wrist around to meet the EFTPOS terminal. Something that would allow just waving the palm of the hand at the terminal would be better in that regard, but more troublesome in others - needing to wear some kind of glove with a chip located where it would be uncomfortable when doing just about anything else with one's hands. The potential answer to that might be implanting the chip, but that presents its own issues.
And smartwatches are the most promising - or maybe least unpromising - of the bunch. Smart glasses with augmented reality functionality have a decent amount of potential, but there is a lot wrong with them from a general privacy point of view, and even the early adopting nerds and geeks aren't about to be told that we should abandon the idea of privacy, never mind society at large. Fitness tracking devices are a nice idea in theory, but so far have tended not to actually make things better. And no other form of wearable technology really has any advantage over a smartphone in your pocket.
Why is the word WORSE in the headline? There is nothing worse about consumers refusing to be fooled into buying crap they do not need.
I have owned 2 and here are the problems. Not in color, or it is sort of color just certain parts are. Will not track all the information you want, if you want it all you have to buy 3 different watches and wear them all, dumb just build it all into one. No way to write your own custom exercise item, (i.e. Fitbit you can only pick from 10 options, but I play many other sports and you cannot program them in) Charging make it wireless and able to charge while asleep and track your sleep (Hate taking it off once a week to charge it and lose all my sleep data for that night). Make it interface will all apps out there not just brands or a few others, all of them. Make them durable, wristband breaks, and face cracks, come on these things are 300US, make them last. Adjustable brightness, adjustable fonts, even if you don't think it needs to be that bright or that big, some people need it and they will sacrifice battery to have it. Another charging option make it charge with your motion, I play a lot of sports I would probably never have to charge it just because I move so much. Better Bluetooth interface, more options to store and play back music. Much better interface to your phone. That is just the top few, but you get the idea. I was hopeful after 3 years (then I bought my first one) they would advance greatly in that time, but to this day they just don't work very well. -WS
And/or because they found a way to make their customers brag buying phones with the biggest profit margin in history. They are literally proud to give their money to a company that stockpiles hundreds of billions abroad.
lucm, indeed.
Working on Ka-band amplifiers... what a waste of my time. I should be working on networked AI smart underwear, with 3D printed reinforced gussets and IoT connectivity to the cloud, and automatic Facebook updates and VR glasses.
FUND ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mostly random stuff.
I need a smartwatch with a lead case that will last 20 years on a single charge of Pu-238 ... a radio-isotope generator would not require me to charge it once or twice a day.
Cabbage patch kids? Hulu hoops? Lava lamps? Tamagotchis? Smart watches? Anyone?
In other words, fads come and go.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It's only growing, not growing fast enough... welcome to the new fail. Also iWatch sales are actually up 50% YoY. The convenience of not fishing the phone out of your pocket was always going to be slim. Not everyone wants any watch on their wrist, much less tech bling. Oh and the iWatch 3 comes in a cellular version you can use without the phone, at the cost of battery life. The whole article reads like "they'll never be able to put a useful computer in a watch form factor". Well that's what they said about PCs. And laptops. And phones. I'm not sure saying it about watches is a good bet...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Two fundamental problems with smart watches:
My smart phone that is always in my pocket does far more and is less likely to get damaged.
My dumb digital watch with an electrolumenescent back-light still does what I expect a watch to do, it does it for $35 dollars, it's permanently water proof for showers and pool swimming, it lasts 6 years on a single battery and I can't figure out why I would want to replace it.
The screen of a smart watch is too small to do jack on and other than maybe buying a fitness tracker, I can't fathom screwing around with watch apps when my nice big phone is right in my pocket. The smart watch is a hangover from the Dick Tracey days of the radio watch fantasy, the problem is we already have better tech than was imagined in the Star Trek communicators, so we kind of leap frogged the whole Dick Tracey watch thing both functionally and practically. Now smart watches are relegated to to the nerd toy aisle unless and until they can be more practical than a real watch with some actually valuable, unique functions.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Only in this backwards, investor-focused fantasy is not buying a product that never existed before and that nobody wants an issue. I'm sure it won't be in the long term, where new consumers can be programmed to think that redundant, risky device is desirable. Digital economy is so used to growth that they've pretty much given up on R&D, view it as a sunk cost or reassign implementation as R&D in their books to make their company look innovative, and think that just releasing a minimum viable product is all that is required.
You can see it very clearly in the iPhone X. $1000 phone who's major defining feature is it's price. It's no longer necessary to come up with something new and useful, just slap on some miniaturized tech, poop out a tech demo and then integrate it into the base proprietary product so that it magically becomes necessary.
Two things are going to happen in the near to mid future, some consumers are going to be dependent on this artificial mill wheel of "technology innovation" and others are going to abandon it for actual utility by using much more capable free and open hardware and software, out of necessity to compete with the pyramid-scheme style technology silos.
I stopped wearing wristband watches about 15 years ago, because I could always tell the time from my mobile phone or from any of the hundreds and thousands of timepieces everywhere.
I realize most people on Slashdot are old fogies who don't like new things, so it's expected that many here just won't understand the advantages of having a smart watch. For me, I loved having it...BUT, I sold out of the whole tech. Android Wear is extremely useful, especially for someone who works out, but it was clear by the battery life (most of which having only 1.5 days...2 days at the very best for a new device) that manufacturers wanted your watch to be unusable within a couple years. Fuck that. I'm not about to invest in "optional" tech that the company wants to milk you for. It's a convenience, but not one I'm willing to get slapped around for. When they start making them with more current processors and battery life that goes for a week, I might consider having one again, but until then they can stuff it. A shame when innovation is stifled by corporate greed.