Galaxy Gear (Source: samsung.com)
There is lots of news about “Smartwatch” these days. In the TV show, Two and a Half Men, we can see Ashton Kutcher wearing Pebble, which is one of his investing companies. Wearable device, especially smartwatch, is no longer a gadget for techies. According to Digital Trends, 1.2 million smartwatches were globally sold in 2013 aside from 700,000 in other categories. Believe it or not, Samsung Galaxy Gear is leading this emerging market even though they launched their first smartwatch model later than that of Sony. However, I think it is meaningless to say which player is dominating the market right now. Actually, there is no detailed data about smartwatches sold until now. The market is still in an early adopter stage as the following trend. FYI, the numbers in the graph mean relative search result at a specific time and a region when it is compared to the maximum result which is represented as 100.
As you see can see from Google Trend, Samsung Galaxy Gear is an invincible market player, leading the media and intriguing public interests. Recently Samsung is strengthening their market leadership by releasing its launch plan for Galaxy Gear 2 and Galaxy Fit. Specifically, the fact that Samsung announced the sequel version within a year after Galaxy Gear demonstrates how they are trying to reflect customers’ feedback on their products. Interestingly, Apple’s smartwatch that has not been publicized yet is getting continuous interests even though there is no public announcement of launching schedule.
Also, we need to focus on the war of wearable platform. Google developed its first smartwatch called Moto360 based on Android wear while Samsung adopted Tizen for Galaxy Gear 2. Samsung is worried that smartwatches will become highly dependent on Google as their smartphone on Android do. Two companies have experienced a subtle situation when Samsung tried to be more independent with their own platform of Bada. The invisible competition between two sides has already started and perhaps we may see who will grab the initiative of wearable OS. That is why many people are interested in Moto360, which will launch this summer.
This environmental situation around smartwatches reminds me of the release of iPhone in 2007. It was an innovation. Even though people used Palm and other PDAs, iPhone fundamentally turned up the mobile industry with its innovative features and user oriented interface. There are few who disagree with the thought that iPhone is the first smartphone. iPhone has exponentially increased the smartphone market as we can see a rapid increase of customers’ interests about iPhone since 2007 in the following trend graph. The interest on a smart device or smartphone that Palm represented increased tenfold. Actually, some people had skeptical thoughts on iPhone in that there were already many smart devices such as MP3 players, digital cameras, and cellular phones and PDAs. They thought smartphone was not a new gadget but just an integration of some features which were already in the market. However, the result is like we know it.
The reasons why many users complain about features and UI of smartwatches are similar with those in PDAs. People are looking forward to seeing the one that would solve these problems. Given that there is an innovative one in the market, maybe smartwatches can be the next big thing as a springboard for wearable devices.
* You can check the other post about a wearable device of this blog, which explains features and functions of a wearable device that customers need.