Apple Watch craze over before it started: Wrist-puter drags market screaming off a cliff Smartwatch shipments are in freefall thanks to slowing sales of the Apple Watch. Research house IDC says that year-over-year shipments were down 32 per cent in the past quarter, with Apple far and away taking the biggest hit as its Watch shipments fell an eye-watering 55 per cent from last year. Analysts say that the drop is …
No, people have realised that they are being mugged into buying a $25 gadget that's useless without an iPhone. There are models out there under $25 that are actually watches, work as phones on their own and have about x3 battery life, with micro SD and mini SIM holders inside.
Cost of a phone is highly dependent on screen size, then the phone radio hardware and phone patent royalty. A small screen wristlet with bluetooth only is a really cheap thing to make.
I'm amazed Apple are still selling any.
@Mage
"No, people have realised that they are being mugged into buying a $25 gadget that's useless without an iPhone. There are models out there under $25 that are actually watches, work as phones on their own and have about x3 battery life, with micro SD and mini SIM holders inside."
Got any links for one of these, I'm interested at that price.
Try Alibaba - taking the usual precautions.
If you don't mind paying a bit more but still 1/6 of Apple prices there are some quite highly rated ones on Amazon. I do wonder if these are being included in the statistics, as someone is making them but may not be communicating with Western consultancies. Cheap ones with BT3 (which would affect battery life) are under $25, more advanced ones with BT4 are closer to $50.
Not something that I would buy, but interesting as a sign of possible things to come.
There are some who don't like wearing watches. Ok, that's a personal preference. Some of us do like to wear watches and still use them to tell time instead of taking our phones out of our pockets.
But the smart watch is expensive, not really a good time keeper and is more of an aux device to your smart phone.
I suspect that the price will drop to expand the market.
Or you could be waiting for the sub-dermal model ... ;-)
My pebble Steel & Time Steel watches last @ 5 days a charge with pretty significant usage. My dad's classic Pebble, who mainly has it to keep from forgetting his phone or missing a phone call, gets more like a week of usage. If I run the new one down to the edge of power, it switches to a simple watch display that lasts another day or so.
I like the fact I can turn up and down my thermostat without having to get out of bed.
'The Apple Watch keeps perfect time'
For about 12-18hrs depending on usage. My TimeX s-l225 self-winder has kept good time for 40 years (it was a hand me down) and has never let me down, the only drawback is I can't use the now frequent "my watch/mobile died" excuse if I'm horribly late.
"self-winder" ... aha the poseur's watch of 40 years ago from what I recall from schooldays. If one of us with non-self-winding watches were seen winding our watches someone with a self-winder would announce that they needed to wind their watch as well followed by a burst of vigorous wrist activity.
> someone with a self-winder would announce that they needed to wind their watch
My friends dad had a self-winder. Turns out he didn't move enough and it kept winding down.
(I'm with Esme on this - I don't like wearing wrist watches but on the (very rare) occasions that I wear formal/nice wear I tend to use a pocket watch. Specifically - one of my wife's grand-uncles pocket watches. I like a nice analogue clock/watch..)
"The Apple Watch keeps perfect time."
Perfect time?
Really?
Time is relative.
The clock chip in the watch is cheap and probably has a bit of skew.
It works well enough because it syncs to the iPhone. Who also has a bit of skew in their cheap clocks.
But it works ok, because it occasionally syncs with the cell towers which have much better clocks which are more accurate.
Good base station clocks have both GPS and Radio antennas to connect to the radio clock signal from a known site and along with knowing their GPS coordinates they are able to sync properly to the time signal and then keep track of the time and its internal skew.
And of course there are differences in terms of the types of clocks and their relative accuracy.
I guess what you meant to say was that your iWatch keeps time well enough that your girlfriend doesn't yell at you for being late. ;-)
I'm old enough to have worn watches when younger because that was teh best way to be able to tell what teh time was. When desktop computers with GUIs came along, there was less need for a watch in order to be aware of teh time, whilst at work. Once mobile phones came along, they killed all need to wear something on your wrist in order to tell the time.
I CAN imagine myself wearing a wristwatch again, in one circumstance, and that's for an evening out. But there are plenty of cheap watches that serve well as costume jewellry, and frankly the analogue dials are prettier than the digital ones, IMO. Even better is a nice mechanical pocket watch - and yes, I have a couple of those. Functional, sufficiently accurate, pretty, and never need a battery. And a durned sight cheaper than an iThing.
I'm with Esme on this. I'm old enough that also needed a watch when growing up, although finding one that didn't make my wrist get uncomfortable was a pain, so I ended up with a sweatband with the watch on top. It was the 80s, so that was one of my lessor crimes against fashion.
After a friend snapped his wrist after a small (1 foot) fall where his flailing arm hit a wall, and the watch nicely concentrated the impact onto a couple of bones, I stopped wearing them. Had one looped on my belt until I got to secondary, where the perv who taught geography did the same thing, so had to change that trick.
Got quite good at reading other people's watches, or clocks, and then the prevalence of digital displays meant it was pretty easy to keep track.
Pocket watches are cool, but my suits that fit are all 3 piece, so tossing a pocket watch on there means that I'm a little less likely to be mistaken for a waiter. Also means I get to wear my granddads rather battered brass watch, which survived WW2 and a couple of years of service after the war.
I don't think I've ever worn a digital watch. Much prefer analogue dials. Including my Withings Activite pop fitness tracker I wear these days.
Analogue watches are often fashion accessories with prices far above those of the Apple Watch. I have a Longines automatic which cost about twice an iWatch, but will last a darn sight longer!
I suspect that like the smartphone is not really a phone, the smartwatch will only become more than a niche product when there are compelling non-timekeeping application for them. Fitness apps seem to be the first of them, possibly touch to pay will be another, but I think we are still waiting for the "Visicalc moment" for mass use.
You ask, the internet answers:
Knuckle duster will be a better description.
If you are with small fingers like me, it will spin freely on any of them. If you have the physique which comes with "I'll be back" said with an Austrian accent, you are likely to end up in A&E with your finger swollen and the guys there cutting the ring in half to get it off.
Which is not yet to have mentioned the most telling part of the review:
I have seen two basic types of reactions. One, and there were rather few of these, were that of the unimpressed – but I guess they are just simply not as tech savvy as I and my fellow watch enthusiasts and nerds are.
See? If you're not excited by a ring with a watch in it then, well, it's just because you aren't smart or knowledgable enough. The problem is definitely yours.
I find this same attitude pervades the smart watch discussion.
Person 1: Excuse but do you have the time?
Person 2: I'll just get my phone out and check.
Now, based on the above if Apple had marketed the iWatch or whatever it's called as an extension to your phone then I'm guessing it might have actually done quite well however at the end of the day there are few people that feel the need or want to wear watches when you have a smartphone with lots of information in your pocket at all times.
I've seen a lot of people with them.
Where it comes in handy... at airports when you need to go through the TSA pre line or when you board the plane. (US issue) There's an app that has the flight detailed Q Code now visible on the watch face.
It does tell time (as accurate as the phone and the network)
It does work well as an alarm for meetings.
It does work well for those who want to screen their calls because their over sized cell phone is too hard to get out of their pocket / purse/ murse/ or backpack.
Its also a status symbol to some who don't understand why some men where mechanical watches...
Personally, I think the next watch I'll get is a CS clock that I can wear as a pocket watch and charge every night. Then I can become a walking ground station for GPS fixes. ;-)
Quite correct ... anyone remember the way smug Apple users used to say "there isn't a tablet market, there's an iPad market" - maybe the same's happening with "early ipeople adopters" having gone for iWatches followed bu everyone else finding better value alternatives
Actually, I think it's the other way around. Early adopters had already owned a smartwatch for around 2-3 years before the Apple Watch even appeared. Despite the media hype of 'nobody ever thought of a smartwatch before Apple', they were very late to enter the smartwatch market and those people likely to need, or believe they needed one had already tooled up. Fashion victims are never going to sustain a product, as you can see from the chart in the article. Apple sold shitloads initially, but this quickly tailed off, while other manufacturers have been selling in smaller numbers and seeing their sales increase.
And you are right, since Pebble released its 3rd gen and smashed all kickstarter records again.
I don't think anyone with a grain of intelligence expected smartwatches to sell in quantities like phones, yet they get all kinds of doom-speak aimed at them because they don't.
Pebble have made a few dodgy decisions lately, but they have the right approach, making a watch which deals with the important stuff in a pragmatic way, and maintaining their place as a niche supplier.
+1 for the Pebble mention.
I got a Pebble Time Round about 6 months ago. Mostly because shiny but also because shiny. It's a lot more useful that I thought it would be and the 1 1/2 - 2 day charge period isn't really a problem - I'm generally near USB socket anyway.
Plus, it looks like a watch and not some hideous, pustular blister growing out your wrist.
Rosie
... for me, at least, with 'smart' watches is the use case. Which doesn't mean I'm about to go off on a rant about there not being on - but it means (and again, I don't claim to be able to speak for anyone but me) use cases need to apply to the user.
Hmmm. I know i had a point here somewhere. Where did I... oh! There it is!
See, i don;t need a watch to tell me there's an email waiting for me. Let's try that again. _I don;t _want_ a watch that tells me there's an email waiting for me. If I can be bothered, if i care, I can take my phone out. But - at the risk of too much personal information - I'm a diabetic. Offer me a watch that continuously monitors my blood glucose level? And sends an alert to me/ my email/ my duck billed platypus if it goes too high (or worse, too low)? OK, so maybe not my duck billed platypus - the b*st*rd never reads his bloody email anyway (blush). But yes. _I_ may not want a device on my wrist that listens to my phone - but _I_ (and some others) may _possibly_ want a device on my wrist that can tell the world things. Some things. And yes, I know there are some Kickstarter projects around glucose monitoring tech in watches, and the possibility of remote alerts. But they're not here yet - so _I'm_ still not interested in a 'smart watch'.
Yet :-).
@werdsmith actually they're making a good point about what they need from a smartwatch. Most smartwatches are being touted with "health benefits". And while it's useful to some to monitor things like heart rate for some the ability to monitor blood sugar and blood pressure isn't just a nice thing to have. It can literally save their lives. I personally have an interest in the health uses of technology due to having several friends and family who are diabetic so if there was a watch that could monitor blood sugar I'd be interested to see it.
I personally have an interest in the health uses of technology due to having several friends and family who are diabetic so if there was a watch that could monitor blood sugar I'd be interested to see it.
I'd be very interested in a non-invasive device that could monitor blood sugar. Unfortunately, in line with elementary scientific principles, to measure blood sugar a device has to have access to blood. The snake-oil and genuinely very dangerous apps that claim to measure blood sugar levels without access to actual blood are total and utter bullshit. Quite how they are even allowed in curated app stores given this fact is some other matter entirely...
In a strange correlation with the rise of smart watches, i have become more interested in dumb watches.
Over the last 5 years i have probably bought 3 or 4 of them, some quite cheap some quite expensive.
I have also noticed that i am more and more drawn to the ones that do less and less (ie no date window, only the time). Maybe its the very fact that people are wearing no watch or a pixelated smartwatch that makes me want to be different. (I'm not, i have a very ordinary Android phone).
I have a Timex to tell me the time. It cost under $50 US and seems to be accurate to well within a second a month.
I have a smart phone to make calls. It can serve also as an alarm, a fitness tracker, an email and web browser, a calorie tracker, and a lot of other things, limited mainly by the willingness of developers to provide software for this remarkable device.
I did not, and do not, feel a need for a smart watch.
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