Google Rumored To Be Making A Smartwatch, Too

The name "Watch" misleads. No one¹ needs a dedicated device to tell time anymore.<p>What may work in the market is one more tier of information interface. cloud &#62; desktop &#62; tablet &#62; phone &#62; ???.<p>I keep my phone in a front trouser pocket. I find that the overwhelming majority of the "dig out the phone"² events during the day are to observe a bit of recently arrived information, or, less frequently, to issue a temporally context sensitive command. Both of these actions would be easily handled by a tiny display with enough room for a few touch zones and limited gesture recognition.³<p>It doesn't need to be strapped to my wrist. I might prefer it clipped to my sleeve or in a shirt pocket. (return of the fob to keep it from escaping?)<p>It won't work for everyone. It will be useless to people who spend the day with uncorrected farsighted vision. They might as well pull out their phones as their eye glasses.<p>It only needs enough energy to get through the day, I'll put it in a charger at night. Make it cheap enough and sell it in a two pack and I'll just swap them in the morning.<p>Do the software right with proximity detection, and I'll have a virtual one on my desktop screen, and a slightly larger one stuck to my car dashboard (solar charger to avoid cable).<p>␄<p>¹ except nurses, and…<p>² I also find that my "drop the phone" events are almost all precipitated by a "dig out the phone". Eliminate the dig, avoid the drop. Women who use purses appear to have similar issues.<p>³ I'd also like to give it voice commands rather than navigating a complex UI, but that is just feeding a mic to the phone or tablet. And if I could hold it to my ear and let it tell me something that would also be great, but don't make it too big to cram in that feature. Still, we are talking a &#60;$100 device here. Bluetooth 4.0 covers all the communications, tiny touch display, speaker, mic, accelerometer.

I'll go ahead and predict that smart watches flop. Hard. I think people want some new thing after tablets are becoming normal, and we thought that was going to be TV, but the content industry has built really good moats around TV so no one can shake it up. So in the urgency to create a new market, smart watches are easy, are direct-to-consumer, have been done in the past and only need polish. That doesn't mean anyone will want one once the "shiny new thing" feeling wears off.

&#62; <i>Google Glass takes wearable computing a step beyond the basic wrist watch. However, the rate of adoption will almost certainly be lower...</i><p>Nonsense. Everyone I've talked to about Glass has suggested a new use that I haven't thought of yet, and I've only met one person who wasn't excited about the project.<p>Everyone I've talked to about smartwatches, on the other hand, doesn't understand. "Why? What can it do that my phone can't?" "But I already have a clock on my phone."<p>This sentiment is mirrored in the tech media. This might be anecdotal at this point, but I'm predicting a flop for watches and a lot of wasted time and money.<p>But then, maybe I'm wrong like I was wrong about tablets before the iPad started selling.

Was there any official statement from Apple that they're working on a smart watch? I don't know, but I just think this is a head-fake from them...Like a few other posters, I just don't see the big deal about a 'smart' watch. I want a simple watch.

I agree with most of the people that commented already. I have though about getting a watch (novelty/binary). Then I realize that my phone is always on me and the time is right there.<p>The only watches I've seen appear to be to signal status. Smart phones do that just as well too.<p>There are probably special occasions that a watch would be better than a phone but I can't even think of any decent ones. Best I can do is comment that watches are touching you and could include that feedback from your body...heart rate, bp etc. Pretty narrow use case if you ask me though.

Here we go. 3DTV all over again.

Interesting how the 'competition' isn't in smart glasses ala google glasses. Guess there's not much competition when real innovation is involved.

Unfortunately for the smartwatch folks, a friend of mine in fashion, (who seems to get this stuff right with uncanny frequency) tells me that the "watch the size of a dinner plate" thing is starting to play out. The new new in watches is going to be understated and ultra-thin.<p>They may have missed their golden moment when having something enormous and bling-y on you wrist wasn't dorky.

Since smart phones became ubiquitous, most of my friends have stopped wearing watches. The phone already tells you the time. So I find the trend of every smart phone manufacturer trying to built a smart watch as extremely ironical.

No one's going to mention that Microsoft again had been there and done it? (see: SPOT watch)<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Personal_Objects_Technology" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Personal_Objects_Technolo...</a>

I'm deeply skeptical of the whole Apple iWatch thing.

Smartwatches were cool...in the eighties. Now, not so much, they are too flashy.

if one has google glasses i don't really see a use case for the watch...

though i'd love to wear a smartwatch, my primary concern is battery life. having to plug it into a charger every other night would be a huge dealbreaker. it would have to use sort of inductive charging (still not optimal since you need a mat everywhere you go). Mechanical watches for decades have used hand winding, kinetic self winding, solar recharging technologies, but would these be sufficient to charge a full -on electronic device? doubtful.<p>once they solve the battery issue, the idea will be a HUUUGE cash cow.