We’ve seen lots of debates whether smartwatches will take off in the near future at all and what OEMs and software developers need to create in order for them to become a thing. I’ve been included in numerous such debates myself. Opinions differ of course, as it’s the case with basically everything else. Well, now we get a professional analytic opinion of this whole situation. Jan Dawson who is a Chief Analyst at Jackdaw Research released a new 30 page long report which is rather discouraging for smartwatches. The report is called “Smartwatches: Market Prospects” and in it Mr. Dawson talks about the current demand for smartwatches as well as offerings that are currently available from some of the biggest smartwatch sellers out there.
As we said, this report is rather discouraging. The report states that people just don’t have the need to purchase or own a smartwatch and that the products offered today fail to deliver the most important functions a smartwatch should have on board. The study was conducted on people in the US and the UK. The report tried to grasp their stance when it comes to different aspects of smartphones and smartwatches, the conclusion was somewhat surprising. It seems like people are just not interested in smartwatches and only one in five respondents used a fitness tracker.
All of this might be understandable though. Smartwatches nowadays really don’t offer that something extra what would attract consumers, something that would basically state “you need to buy me because you can’t do this with your smartphone” or “this is A LOT easier to do on a smartwatch than it is on a smartphone”. Not only that, but they need to improve basic things in order for smartwatches to become successful, like battery life or instance. It is really annoying and unnatural (might be an overstatement, but…) to charge your smartwatch every day or two, a Pebble is an exception of course, but we’re talking about a black and white e-paper display here. They need to reach the point where you can use a smartwatch for a full week at least without having to charge it, and I’m talking about a touchscreen display in color here.. The report suggests that smartwatches need innovative features in order to stimulate people’s interested and I tend to agree with that. Smartwatches haven’t been around for long and it might be too early to judge them, hopefully we’ll see them evolve into something that really makes our lives easier and makes us use them on a daily basis. We sure have a lot of platforms which could pull the weight on the innovation, from Pebble and Android Wear to the upcoming Apple’s view on a smartwatch and its platform.