Quick note to discuss the silly brief fad that was around smart watches. I said before they came that there was no real economy in it, and I said when the iToy sorry iWatch sorry Apple Watch was introduced, that it won't set the world on fire, and that it will be a rare iFlop like the Newton and Lisa, not anything like total reinvention of tech such as the Mac was to PCs, iPod was to musicplayers and iPhone was to mobile phones (the last two, that I also predicted and discussed in my writing, including this, considered by many the best forecast about iPhone's impact, by anyone who wrote about the iPhone before it launched). And when the Apple Watch was launched for sale, I wrote one more piece warning that there was nothing there. So now, the facts are slowly emerging. So lets take stock.
Some benefits can be had from wearing a 'smart gadget' on the wrist, like health issues or sports related uses. For those, several great dedicated devices exist that are far less intrusive, less expensive, do their job far better, are waterproof - plus do the work of a watch ie telling time as good as any watch - and don't need to be recharged every day and don't have all the hassles of a smartphone miniaturized and bulky on the wrist. So yes, there IS a market for health or fitness uses. Fine. Buy a Fitbit.
But even when ALL 'smart watches' are added together, their market is TRIVIAL in size compared to other major consumer electronics in the smart gadgets space like tablets, laptops or indeed smartphones. And every person who WEARS a smartphone ALSO CARRIES a smartphone. So now the silly tiny cumbersome thing on the wrist is trying to do the work of the gadget in the pocket, yet is unable to do most of those things well (write a message?) or at all (take a selfie). The smart watch is a dumb idea. But there are specialist niche areas where specialist niche products can sell yes. I can also sell you a smartPHONE that serves a specialist niche area like say Caterpillar's unbreakable industrial smartwatches or for example Marshall's London musician-oriented smartphone. So smart wearable healthcare gadgets for the wrist? There are some millions in that space. Big whooptedoo. It is a fart in the Sahara in their relevance to this industry which sells 2 Billion mobile phones every YEAR (3 in 4 of those are smartphones). I am not saying there is zero market for the dumb smartwatch for the wrist, but its a niche market for healthnuts. Buy a Fitbit.
Now what happens NEXT? Will the smart watch owners REPLACE their expensive wrist-toys? Some who really love theirs, will. Many who bought one or received one as a gift, grow tired of it and stop wearing one, and never consider buying another !!! The repeat business of EXISTING owners is far less than 1 in 1. IT might be as bad as only half of current owners will bother to buy another. And those who might buy another, will have FAR longer replacement cycles than those for smartphones. Thus, the market is TRIVIAL and FAR better served by the dedicated devices. Buy a Fitbit!
Then the ecosystem is a mirage, so nobody bothers to develop for this which turned out to be nothing nearly as promising as the iPad and tablets (now shifting to phablets, more phablets sold in Q4 of last year than tablets) and utterly meaningless compared to smartphone market size. So what modest app development was conned into this illusion of a market has been badly burned. What about the device makers? Apple has its iSheep who will buy any iTrinket and pay tons for it. Some day they may start to think for themselves. The iToy sorry iWatch sorry Apple Watch may be that wake-up call when they see that not everything coming from Cupertino is worth buying. But the iSheep are well brainwashed so it may take more than one such abusive product pushed at gullible customers. Want to buy a Newton? How about a Lisa PC? Apple is not infallible. I warned you that the Apple Watch was one of their rare market failures, and that after the SECOND edition fails to sell even as modestly as the first edition, Apple will end that product line. The Smart Watch was a Dumb Idea. It will go the way of the netbook and the pocket LCD TV. Or of you want to think it was a fad, then think of the brief life and death of the dorky bluetooth earpiece fad (and the sad future of the Kindle as a stand-alone ebook reader gadget)..
So now, what happens on the wrist then? Some of those who proudly wore their iToy will become branded as iDorks and the very presence of that bulky thing on the wrist becomes a badge of shame. And even if that only happens occasionally to the 'loyal' smart watch wearer, they will soon become laughing stocks and it will mean, they will find ever more excuses NOT to wear the damned thing. And every time one Smart Watch owner goes a day without wearing it, increases the risk that user decides, its actually not worth wearing anymore. This is Apple's Revenge on the Nerds
Why is this Apple's revenge? The smart watch was not introduced by Apple. In fact Apple was quite late compared to Samsung and Motorola. So why is this Apple's revenge?
The key is the battery. If someone can come up with a battery that is small cheap and very powerful, then the smart watches will gain traction.
Also the smart watches need to be cheaper in order for people to buy them since all their features are already present in all smart phones. And because the smart phone will always come first (due to larger screen size), then the watch will always be the redundant device and not the smart phone. So because the smart watches are redundant, they need to be a lot cheaper.
Posted by: cornelius | January 21, 2016 at 01:17 AM
Hi cornelius
Come on. Nobody, NOBODY thought smart watches were anything worth pursuing until rumors of the iWatch emerged. Then when the 'smart people' noticed Apple must soon be doing its iWatch, thats when all the fools rushed into it. If Apple had never bothered with this, we'd never had any smart watch hysteria. The mobile phone watch idea is more than a decade older than Apple Watch, and had ZERO hysteria until the iWatch rumors began. All the fault of iHysteria. All of it. Sorry... :-)
(and yes, I might be smiling just a bit)
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | January 21, 2016 at 01:30 AM
Oh, sorry cornelius, yes..
You did have a good point too. So yes, the battery? So you think the concept of smart watch is good, but the technical implementation is limiting it. I hear you. This is the exact same argument made in our industry (mobile) often for example with location-based services, arguing the idea is not bad, its just that the precision was not good enough. And then one generation after the next they add to the precision, and always promise the next version will finally crack it - and it never does. The IDEA is bad.
So same with smart watch. No, its not the battery. That is only a small PART of the problem. The real issue is the smartphone. Every smart watch owner also has a smartphone. The smartphone can do everything the watch can do, and most of it better - far bigger screen, the camera, inputs etc and there is NOTHING the watch can do, that the smartphone cannot also do. Hence, its a forever-losing proposition to the smartwatch. As a mass market product. Like I said, some will buy the iToys to their wrists and even find some utility out of them. Thats not a sustainable market to continue the enormous costs of a competitive and evolving modern digital computing gadget like a tablet, smartphone or laptop. It will die out as utterly silly useless, except for the few Fitbit type of specialist devices.
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | January 21, 2016 at 01:34 AM
@Tomi Ahonen
Do you consider the Pebble as a smartwatch?
Posted by: Tyrian Dunaédine | January 21, 2016 at 09:28 AM
moin moin,
its not dead, its too early.
and not well thought through.
At some point you will have "smart" glasses that go full augmented something.
Either standalone or streamed from smartphones. why not have a watch as a gimic too? with future display tech. a complete transparent armlet display. with good design.
colors and utility to what ever you like.
it is wearable fashion. and can have a clock on it if you need one. for 1 second.
Br
Nils
Posted by: Nils Strauss | January 21, 2016 at 09:29 AM
Hey Tomi, I think Polar makes way better fitness trackers than Fitbit. Do change it to "buy a Polar" in a few paragraphs ;-)
Posted by: Dipankar Mitra | January 21, 2016 at 10:27 AM
What about this:
"and the sad future of the Kindle as a stand-alone ebook reader gadget"
Do you actually believe that everybody likes to read their books on an eye-straining smartphone display or rather that better displays would make such devices obsolete.
As a heavy eBook reader I certainly couldn't do so without a device that's tolerable for hours to look at. A smartphone display is not.
Granted, this will remain a niche market but even niches need to be served and these readers are pretty mature and I do not expect any revolutionary future developments that can drive costs up.
The sustainability of smartwatches is another matter. They also will remain a niche market but they are far from mature and need lots of investment for very little return.
Still, Kudos to Apple for truly capitalizing on the iSheep mentality here. It was a relatively safe bet to release this thing considering how many people without a will of their own would just reflexively buy this thing, just because it's made by Apple.
As a software development platform it's a waste of time though. The prospects are even worse than for Windows Phone and those are already dismal.
Posted by: Tester | January 21, 2016 at 03:19 PM
Um, I actually know quite a few people with Apple Watches, including a few who I'd never have expected. Also, undoubtedly some people who weren't expecting them got them as gifts this past Christmas and will try them and like them. Some of my other colleagues (avid runners, etc.) are holding out for more fitness features and a GPS, which I'm sure future versions will have. It doesn't need to do everything a FitBit does, just enough things so that it is a "single" wearable.
Just because you don't like something, or it doesn't immediately rocket to the top doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile. My guess is that it will easily replace the revenue from the decline in iPod sales (now that virtually no one uses separate music players).
Posted by: Catriona | January 21, 2016 at 05:05 PM
If the Apple Watch were such a flop, why would Apple be expanding sales of an $1100-$1500 version tomorrow (6 months after the variant was launched and 9 months into the Apple Watch launch)? http://fashionista.com/2016/01/apple-watch-hermes-available-online
My guess is that Apple Watch sales are doing just fine. If Apple eventually sells 15-20 million per year (remember, Watch 2 will be aimed at those who don't already have an Apple Watch), that could be a nice market. That's only about 6-8% of the total iPhone market, so is very doable. They could even make a play to expand the market by leaving the old model around for $299 or even $249, which would still be more expensive than the competition but cheap enough for impulse buys and holiday gifts.
Posted by: Catriona | January 21, 2016 at 05:14 PM
@Catriona:
iPhone drives watch sales, not the other way around. And yes, since it's Apple it will take a while before the hype dies off. But it will die off, that's almost 100% certain.
Meanwhile it's a nice side profit for Apple.
Posted by: Per "wertigon" Ekström | January 21, 2016 at 06:22 PM
@Wayne Brady:
"Which will sell more units this year? Nokia smartphones or Apple Watches?"
Does it matter?
As a product the Apple Watch may be somewhat profitable.
As a product CATEGORY, smartwatches are a tiny niche and the risk of R&D costs being higher than the actual profits is high. The only reason why Apple was able to seel some where other don't is solely attributable to the iSheep factor. You need such deluded people to sell a product nobody needs. The only people I know who bought such a thing were some posers who solely bought it to show off their 'status' to like-minded morons.
Any regular person I talked with about smartwatches consider the whole idea ridiculous.
Posted by: Tester | January 22, 2016 at 12:05 AM
Three comments.
a) No matter what direction smartwatches take (specialized devices or general-purpose terminals, standalone or dependent upon a phone, etc) the battery is major part, not a minor part (here I disagree with Tomi), but not the decisive part either (here I disagree with Cornelius).
Mathematically, the battery is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition.
Let me point out that as a watch, whatever is presented now is a regression. Traditional watches had to be manually rewound every couple of days, or perhaps every day, but it took only a minute. The Apple Watch does not even last a day, and takes hours to recharge. This cannot fly.
b) Apple has been often criticized for its slant towards skeuomorphism. I wonder whether it is a (guilty) victim of it -- designing that device as a wristwatch, to compete with traditional luxury watches, manipulated with the small side buttons like watches, etc -- but which is almost useless in standalone mode (requires an iPhone for anything "interesting"), and whose battery does not last years, unlike modern watches.
Perhaps if Apple had really ignored the wristwatch form factor and done something truly innovative, its device might be more relevant.
c) Is it really appropriate to qualify people of iSheep and iDorks?
Posted by: E.Casais | January 22, 2016 at 12:36 AM
BTW the FBI was able to recover Hillary's deleted emails. She is a clueless Luddite, of course. Naturally Obama's DOJ will find some technicality to let it slide (unlike with General Petraeus, who they are STILL going after), but perhaps she was telling the truth when she said she wiped it with a cloth.
Posted by: Catriona | January 22, 2016 at 06:11 AM
@Wayne Brady:
The entire smartwatch story and this idiotic Apple focus of the industry had done more harm than good over the years. It's purely idiotic that everybody seems to believe in iMagic or whatever you will call it.
I guess with the smartwatches it went like 'let's try if it works'. Well, it didn't.
Only Apple, pandering to the idiotic customers, who have forgotten to think on their own, has some tiny success here. Well, even that idiotic faction cannot be milked indefinitely.
"It is likely that Apole made more money in the first 9 months of the Apple Watch than Xiaomi has ever made total."
If you talk gross revenue, maybe that's true. But now factor in the R&D costs in both hardware and software (Apple needed to design a new product, new software and whatnot, the R&D costs for a stock Android phone should be close to zero these days) and things may look different. That's how these Chinese manufacturers can sell so cheap. They got a product whose specs are well known, whose parts are mass produced and only need to be assembled and whose software is to the largest degree developed by someone else free of cost.
Apple has none of these advantages because they are in the 'premium' segment where stagnation is equalled with moving backwards. That foes even more for a new niche product like the Apple Watch.
But we'll see how this continues. It should be clear that the customer base that truly would settle for a two year replacement cycle here is tiny. In the end this watch business will remain a footnote in history. The problem with this footnote is that so far it's Tim Cook's only genuine product launch - and if it gets remembered for that, it'd be bad.
Posted by: Tester | January 22, 2016 at 09:53 AM
The world is changing and so does the wearables. It is not important whether we like it or not. With due respect to all the posts made above, I personally feel that we should look it as a technology that can upgrade our life. The sensational telegraph machines, land line phones are outdated now and we can not imagine our life with the old equipements.
There are ample varieties available in smart watches including quality and prices. Our concern should be to get the best smart watch at the right price.
Posted by: Jayant | January 22, 2016 at 11:09 AM
It would be wise to spend a week using a device before doing this kind of analysis for it, not just read reviews over the internet.
Posted by: Egor | January 22, 2016 at 11:26 AM
@Lullz:
Of course the hype will die down. It always does. :)
The hype over IBM died down a loooooong time ago. Doesn't mean IBM is dead now does it?
Posted by: Per "wertigon" Ekström | January 22, 2016 at 03:17 PM
We have jobs for our desktop.
We have a jobs for my iPhones.
I don't have a Apple Watch but my wife does and she replaced her Fitbit with it and she loves it for the Small Jobs it does. She no longer searches for her iPhone in her purse or desk or couch. She gets notified
We could all that the iPhone and watch do on the desktop, so..... why not just... never mind.
Posted by: Halibut_ter | January 22, 2016 at 04:49 PM
AND, it does all the jobs the Fitbit did for her and more and easier and it has crap battery life. Life's a compromise. So are devices.
Posted by: Halibut_ter | January 22, 2016 at 04:51 PM
(I meant to post the Hillary comment in the Cruz thread).
Anyway, Apple Watch supposedly had a big holiday quarter, and the next Watch isn't due out until Fall. So this sounds like it will be marketed as a gift. Meanwhile, the Hermes is now generally available (at least online). If Apple sells 20 million of these a year I think they'd be thrilled. The development costs here on out are probably not that much. The SoC will likely always be a few generations behind the iPhone (no need for all the power), and once Apple switches the iPhone to OLED they'll gain supply chain efficiency on the Watch display, as well.
Posted by: Catriona | January 22, 2016 at 10:54 PM