New smartwatches may have a challenge with demand from consumers as it’s reportedly unclear whether or not people have much an interest in actually purchasing one of the numerous types of wearables that are currently available on the market. While some wearables have seen fairly decent success, smartwatches in general command a low portion of this product category in terms of market share, with IDC pointing out last year that Apple holds about 41 percent of the smartwatch market which is nearly half, and is in comparison to other companies like Samsung, LG, and others who make smartwatches with different operating systems that include both Tizen and Android Wear. This is good news for Apple, but it seems like a smaller picture of success for smartwatches in general as it’s noted that the company’s 41 percent of the smartwatch market is only about 4.9 percent of wearables overall.
While smartwatches are not necessarily unsuccessful, excitement may not be as high as it was when smartwatches were first being introduced. The lack of clarity about the direction of the market and the demand for the products within it may pose a challenge for LG and Verizon, who just recently introduced a few brand new smartwatches, all three of them running on Android Wear 2.0, which was just announced recently as well.
LG’s Watches, which include the LG Watch Style and LG Watch Sport, are joined by the Verizon Wear24 smartwatch, and all three followed Google’s announcement of the Android Wear 2.0 launch from last week. Android Wear 2.0 holds some promise for the platform and may just give enough of a boost to it and the smartwatch market when combined with the three new watches, as well as existing watches that are set to get the update to the new version of software, but Android Wear in general has been lacking when it comes to popularity as of late and has been struggling to gain traction. Much of that could be due to the lack of some of the features that users and early adopters of the platform have been asking for, like Android Pay support, Google Assistant and more. With it still being really early in the year and with only a handful of new smartwatches having been announced, it’ll be difficult to tell what the landscape will be like for smartwatches going forward in regards to in regards to the smartwatch market, but perhaps LG and Verizon’s new offerings can usher in a lift in interest from consumers.