Smartwatch sales are tanking

The biggest issue for me with the &quot;smartwatch&quot; is that they don&#x27;t have feature parody with dumb watches. I&#x27;ve had many watches in the past and the battery lasts for years. I can also turn my wrist and see the time instantly. Who would have thought?<p>What I get now is some piece of crap that needs to be charged every night. So I basically have no features while I&#x27;m sleeping. I can&#x27;t just wake up in the middle of the night an instantly know what the time is.<p>As a battery saving measure, the time isn&#x27;t displayed until I turn my wrist and wait some obscene amount of time (around a second?). It also goes from being dark to being lit... so much for being discrete.<p>I wish they would stop calling these things &quot;watches&quot; just because they go on your wrist. I expect anything called a watch to have the features of a watch and be on my wrist pretty much all of the time. Call it a fitness tracker if it&#x27;s not meant to be worn 24&#x2F;7.<p>Let me know when battery life is within a couple of orders of magnitude of real watches, then maybe I&#x27;ll revisit.

Misleading title. You can&#x27;t compare sales from the Apple Watch&#x27;s initial release with the months leading up to a new model.<p>If you take Apple out of the picture sales stay pretty steady. Samsung grows a little, Garmin grows a lot. Far from &quot;tanking&quot;.<p>Smartwatches will continue to sell steadily (to early adopters and developers) until the tech catches up.<p>The new Apple Watch is already a huge improvement over the last model, but mainly in software. WatchOS was terrible until 3.0 and it still isn&#x27;t there. It tries to do too much because Apple doesn&#x27;t quite seem sure what it&#x27;s <i>supposed</i> to do.<p>For telling the time, displaying notifications, fitness tracking, and a couple of other things it&#x27;s great. Why then is the homescreen a complete mess of icons for half-features? Why (until WatchOS 3.0) could it take upwards of ten seconds to open an app?<p>I imagine Apple would never release the iPad today without first-party weather&#x2F;stocks&#x2F;calculator apps.

Seems like they will stay a niche until they can replace phones entirely, and perhaps even past then. A lot of people just don&#x27;t like having something strapped to their wrist and&#x2F;or want a large screen.<p>As a watch guy (and most watch people are guys) the first smart watch I&#x27;ve been excited about is the upcoming gear S3:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.samsung.com&#x2F;global&#x2F;galaxy&#x2F;gear-s3&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.samsung.com&#x2F;global&#x2F;galaxy&#x2F;gear-s3&#x2F;</a><p>Because it looks like a real watch and has the rotating bezel for input, but I recognize I&#x27;m a tiny market.<p>I hope it doesn&#x27;t set my wrist on fire.

Man, I didn&#x27;t expect Pebble to be down so much. My wife and I have 5 of them between us. The always-on screen and a week of battery life make them much more attractive than most other smartwatches.

The &quot;smartwatch&quot; from Apple and Android is not a good idea. Fitbit and Pebble are closer to the right direction. Apple&#x2F;Android keep trying to make watch-sized smartphones. But they will never compete with actual smartphones, they will just always be annoying inferior smartphones on your wrist.<p>The key factor is to consider which senses are optimal UI for each device. Smartphones dominate the visual and audio senses. Smartwatch simply can&#x27;t compete there. So smartwatch should have a very simple very low power display like the Fitbit and Pebble and maybe a simple speaker&#x2F;mic.<p>So what sense is the smartwatch good for? It&#x27;s touch. There is a lot of potential of using vibrations&#x2F;touch as a UI. For example, I think the Apple watch vibrates for turns when you do a Maps route. That&#x27;s a good start. They need to focus more on things like this. There&#x27;s a lot you can communicate with vibration, kind of like morse code (such as two quick vibrates, a long vibrate, etc.)<p>And now Apple has a very advanced touch sensor (the new one in iphone 7). Get rid of that silly big screen on Apple watch. Put the touch sensor there. Why not just allow thumbprint scan, wave my watch at a Apple Pay terminal, and buy things? Way less effort than taking out my phone.<p>These kind of pure touch and vibration UI is a huge open field. And I think Apple somewhat understands this. But they need to make the big step of dropping that screen. Because that&#x27;s not where the smartwatch is strong. And it would also allow long battery life which is more important for smartwatch. People are used to daily charge for phones. But much less tolerant of that for watches.

Festive gadget:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.co.uk&#x2F;trends&#x2F;explore?q=apple%20watch,pebble%20watch,android%20watch,samsung%20watch,fitbit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.co.uk&#x2F;trends&#x2F;explore?q=apple%20watch,pebb...</a><p>Seems interest in smart watches happens at Christmas time. There is a problem with that because you don&#x27;t buy people the same present every year and there cannot be that many people wanting a new smart watch at Christmas, particularly if it is marginally better than their existing smart watch.<p>I think the same people that bought 3D televisions and tablets bought smart watches, they will be wanting something else next. Maybe they will return to buying smart watches when there is some new battery-defying functionality to them, i.e. they are as good as smart phones in miniature with lots of previously unimagined &#x27;Pokemon Go&#x27; grade apps that make the upgrade worth it.<p>I also do not believe that any of the smart watches cut the mustard as far as true watch aficionados are concerned. To some people the fanciest ceramic iWatch is on an equal par with a resin calculator watch, lacking intangible heritage things and therefore not a cool item in their minds (they probably fear not being able to use a smart watch). These same people were equally snobbish about digital photography, therefore it could take a generation before smart watches are accepted &#x27;artistically&#x27; by people who are like that.<p>I am hoping that a category killing smart watch gets made by Google in the same price range as a Chromecast. For £30 a lot of people would give a smart watch a go.

I don&#x27;t get it. Decades of science fiction depicting Heads-up-Display glasses and wrist-strapped laptops, with people wishing and wishing we lived in such a world.<p>Now here we are and society isn&#x27;t going in for it. Bluetooth head sets, smartwatches, Google Glass, none of it is sticking. Even though smart phones are becoming cumbersome due to size and inability to use hands-free or even one-handed well.<p>Are we ever going to see a cyberpunk future?

Can someone make a super-low energy, classic looking watch with GPS? For people with Alzheimer&#x27;s &#x2F; Dementia. Could make a kids version too.<p>They have GPS watches, but the battery seems to last maybe a day or two. My dad isn&#x27;t going to remember to do that, so I would need to do so on a less frequent basis.<p>Maybe with some self-charging based on user movement (they used to make self-winding watches)? Keep GPS off until receive (authenticated) SMS message asking it to turn on, then report back position? Or maybe just triangulate position based on cell towers every 15 min...

I&#x27;m really shocked by how much I appreciate my Apple watch. I bought it figuring I&#x27;d try it for 13 days and return it. Instead, I forgot to put it on in the morning of the fifth day and turned around on the way to work to get it -- it made that much difference. My GF, likewise, finds hers indispensable.<p>But it does pretty much everything I need right now so I don&#x27;t see a point in upgrading. The analysts are hoping for an upgrade market.

As a wearer of a 1950s Bulova selfwinder, rather than the <i>face</i>, I&#x27;d like to see smatwatch vendors focus on the <i>band</i>. In other words, a third-party creates a 16mm or 18mm Nato style strap which embeds the battery, heartrate sensors, motion sensors, etc. and communicates to a smartphone or PC via bluetooth for data collection. The same 1950s Bulova (or whatever) face is attached to the band.

had one and returned it. They don&#x27;t provide much value beyond real-time notifications &amp; a fancy pedometer.

As the comments in that article pointed out - the hassle far outweighs the value. After not wearing a watch for over 20 years, I&#x27;ve had an Apple Watch for about 3 months now (it was a free gift), and honestly, as much as the device is useful, it is a pain - especially when it comes to battery life.<p>The charge seems to last <i>just</i> enough to fall flat at the most inconvenient times, i.e. when I am just about to leave the house all day, or right when I am about to go to bed (I use the watch primarily for sleep tracking).<p>Most of the apps on the watch kind of require you to wear it <i>consistently</i> all of the time to give you meaningful data, however current battery life means you end up with large gaps in your human telemetry that your data is always missing vital chunks.

I&#x27;ve always been skeptical of smart watches. As others say, if it can&#x27;t outright replace my phone, i just don&#x27;t see much value in them.<p>I wear &quot;nice&quot; watches occasionally, usually any time i have to wear a suit. As a toy, an epaper watch with actual physical hands would be pretty cool. The two extra hands on something like a diving watch could be used for other gauges, maybe unread email count or something goofy like that.<p>A watch seems like the right target for that semi connected on call state. Sort of like a modern pager. I&#x27;m not reading email, or available on hangouts. But i&#x27;ll get the alert that we need to communicate. Low key, non intrusive, acceptable at a funeral. Just a few bits of information.

I bought one of the first generation Android Wear devices for $50 a few months after they debut. There was some convenience to the simple verbal commands for timers and the instant answers made for a neat party trick, but the speech-to-text wasn&#x27;t good enough for moderately complex messaging (I once said I would be there in &quot;a bit over 15 minutes&quot; and got the fraction bit&#x2F;15 minutes) and it was heavy and uncomfortable. I&#x27;ve also become less and less comfortable with being so intimate with Google.<p>I do see value added in the notification mirroring, however. There are many situations where it&#x27;s useful to see updates without taking out and unlocking your phone: at a meeting, with your hands full, walking around in a crowd. I hadn&#x27;t worn my watch for the better chunk of a year until two weeks ago when I needed instant Twitter notifications during business hours should a convention I attend start selling its badges. Now that I have those badges, it&#x27;s back into the drawer until needed again. My calculator watch is more comfortable and I have metal watches that look nicer. Unless I have a defined need for notifications on my wrist, I currently am better off with a conventional watch.

Why do I need a smartwatch, when I have a perfectly acceptable smartphone that does about 10x10 things more than the smartwatch will ever be able to do?<p>If I just needed to know the time, I&#x27;d buy a watch. If I need to know the time and make a call, I&#x27;d buy a smartphone.<p>Which I did.<p>Welcome to the future. We don&#x27;t really solve problems - we just invent new ones and call the old problems solved.<p>Hell, I don&#x27;t even remember what problem smartwatches were supposed to solve!<p>I&#x27;m going to go get off my own damn lawn.

Of course sales are tanking, these things are bloody useless.<p>I have the first generation of motorola 360, I wear it every day and charge it every night. The hardware is fine (for a first gen) and I like its style. But, I unpaired it from my phone a long time ago, because I ran into too many issues. First the connection was sucking my phone&#x27;s battery to a point it wasn&#x27;t funny anymore, then updating an app on my phone would crash the watch&#x27;s OS, and again randomly causing the thing to become uncomfortably hot. Finally the overhaul quality of the ecosystem went down with each updates (notifications delayed, vibrations missed, glitches...)<p>The features I don&#x27;t miss:<p>- Fitness &amp; heart rate (that thing was a joke)<p>- Music (I have a phone for that, thank you)<p>- Note taking (just no. I&#x27;m not ever again talking to my watch in public)<p>- Text responding (what is wrong with you?)<p>The features I do miss a little bit:<p>- GPS guidance with vibrations when biking (two for left, three for right, - that was genius)<p>- getting my phone&#x27;s notifications (when it was working)

Pebble is rather good, I would say it is easily the best price:quality smartwatch available out there.

I like my 2nd gen Moto 360 as a watch, for its aesthetics, and as a simple notifier, but almost everything else on it is beyond broken. Just trying to check the weather takes 20+ seconds and fails half the time, even on wifi. Pull out the phone and the weather is already there, updated. What the hell. Ok Google could be useful, except for the situations you&#x27;d want to use it (hands full, crowded environment) are exactly the situations where it fails.<p>USAA has a great watch app, though, which somehow has many fewer reliability&#x2F;latency problems than every other app. I can do most of my banking just walking down the hall while my phone is locked up at my desk.

I predict Apple is very happy with the smartwatch market being down, much like Microsoft loved it (back in &#x27;99) when internet stocks were down. They are an iPhone company, and probably prefer (as a company) to defer threats to that incumbency.<p>I own an Apple Watch, and a Pebble before it, but honestly until more devices are addressable by such devices, it&#x27;s usability is limited.<p>I think it may also have something to do with the relative popularity of Alexa and pervasive voice input in general - though I shy away from those due to privacy concerns. I mean, why wear a watch and tap for Siri when you can just call out for Alexa (and now Google) to ask about weather?<p>(edited for clarity)

Haven&#x27;t they figured out yet that telling the time is the thing that smart watches do the worst.<p>instead, i want a band. I&#x27;m still waiting for an Android Wear band. i want something a bit like the Microsoft band 2 [1], but slimmer and a smaller screen. something as a notification device and to take voice notes. but i don&#x27;t need it to replace my watch because it&#x27;s not &quot;on&quot; when i look at it.<p>For telling the time, I&#x27;ll either wear a &quot;proper&quot; watch (as well) or none at all.<p>[1] I&#x27;m on my 3rd ms band. they randomly die (stop charging). ms are good about it and replace it quickly... but soon my warranty will be up and it&#x27;s all over.

Smart watches don&#x27;t have any particular niche to capture that other devices don&#x27;t have. Maybe if they expanded into large screen computers, that would be cool. It&#x27;d be nice to have a rolled up monitor on my arm - it&#x27;d be great for maps cause I could unroll it with the other hand to get a peek at the map and then let it auto-re-roll itself. Sorry - I don&#x27;t have a diagram to show you the idea, but maybe you can catch my drift. I&#x27;m aware there are some flexible screens already (some organic stuff), but I don&#x27;t know much about the progress in that area.

I suspect people &#x2F;want&#x2F; a smart watch so they can feel like Dick Tracy and Roger Smith (Anime, Big O).<p>The reality is that the smart watch is little more than a smaller screen attached by wireless personal area network to the real computer; which has a better (bigger, brighter, larger buttons) and more responsive screen.<p>I stopped wearing a normal watch once I had a decent pocket chronometer (a comparatively primitive simple pocket flip phone).<p>I think that&#x27;s the marketing problem here; it isn&#x27;t clear to the average consumer what the use case, if any, actually is.

I liked my Android Wear watch, but it never completely worked. Things like dismissing a reminder on the watch would get a sad cloud rather than also dismiss it on my phone. I thought maybe it was because I was running cyanogenmod, so I went back to stock Verizon firmware, but it had all the same bugs. A few weeks later, the Android Wear app started crashing in the background 2-3 times per minute and giving me a popup each time. I disabled it and haven&#x27;t really used the watch since.

Someone mentioned it in the comments on TC. The decline may have been due to the Apple Watch v2&#x27;s imminent announcement. I think people are willing to try it but not if there is &quot;most definitely&quot; a newer and improved version coming out soon for the same price.<p>2017 may well be the year for watches. This topic is pointless now given it&#x27;s end of Oct and BF and Christmas is coming up soon. Let&#x27;s revisit this topic mid 2017.<p>*edit, spelling.

This is slightly misleading -- and the table is missing its footnotes from the original article -- since the &quot;data only includes smartwatches capable of running third party applications&quot;. As a result, it ignores a lot of great wearables that for some reason IDC doesn&#x27;t consider &quot;smartwatches&quot; which don&#x27;t <i>need</i> third party apps.

I must be a curmudgeon but what&#x27;s the purpose of a smart watch? It always seemed like a solution in search of a problem.

Of course they are, they are just a gimmick to try to sell gadgets to those that already own a PC, tablet and phones and overcome the flat downwards curve in sales, now that all those devices are good enough for most people.<p>As a former owner of the old Casio and Timex first waves of smartwatches, I fail to get any interest on 21st version of them.

When I was in Shenzhen recently I noted that smart watch shops were everywhere, with literally hundreds of different models to choose from... but very few people were actually wearing one! I believe this will be (er, has) become the CB radio fad of this generation.

If I ever do get a smartwatch, it would be because it&#x27;s a sensor. I think the health&#x2F;medical&#x2F;biohacking potential there is huge. The only thing is - must it really be on my wrist, and do I really need to look at it or touch&#x2F;push buttons on it?

I&#x27;m wondering why no one discusses that Q3 was the Quarter right <i>before</i> new Apple Watch introduction, and Apple owns a majority share in the market? Of course people were waiting to buy a new device. Q4&#x2F;Q1 will be more relevant.

If you can&#x27;t use them....shoot them <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;JumhJWgAS4U?t=16s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;JumhJWgAS4U?t=16s</a>

Probably because there hasn&#x27;t been an updated android wear watch in ages besides the fossil, which I bought after my moto 360 died. Google is dragging their feet.

When I&#x27;m not wearing my <i>mechanical</i> Seiko, I wear a Garmin GPS for running. Always-on is big for me. Are there any that have that feature these days?

I think their conclusion is a little misguided - if you remove the Apple Watch from the list, overall sales are roughly flat, at 1.6-1.7m units.

It will continue to tank until they become the phone and the phone becomes just another screen (eg. ipod touch, mini tablets).

What killed the smart watch for me is the watch form factor. I don&#x27;t want stuff strapped to my body. I had to stop wearing a watch many years ago for a few months and I couldn&#x27;t do it again since I lost the habit. It just feels unnatural. I understand that it can be laughed at, because I wear glasses. An extremely lightweight notification device inside my glasses would be the right form factor for me.

I&#x27;ve been wanting one but given their prices and longevity I rather just get a nicer phone.

I love my Pebble, I&#x27;m now late to 50% less of my scheduled appointments :-)