Smart Watch Industry Observation: Incubation of Freshmen and Dilemmas Coexist

Android Wear is seen by Google as a side-by-side project with Android. However, after the enthusiasm of 2013 and 2014, the topic of smart watches was refrigerated by the media, and there was no headline.


Smart watches inherit the form of traditional watches, but the essence is more like PCs, smart phones, and the consumer electronics that Pad continues. Even so, compared to the seemingly tall drones, VR, the shape and concept of smart watches are so inconspicuous that they can not create a technical topic that attracts the reader's attention, and are abandoned in the headlines of the media.

Due to the "abandonment" of the media, consumers, media, and investors have begun to doubt the rationality of the existence of smart watches. At the same time, a wave of investigation reports has been continuously interpreted by the media that has been sung, and the smart watches are not easy to use and the practicality is not high, so the user is not sticky.

Is it "rejected" by the media?

The incomplete interpretation of the survey data led to prejudice, the inevitable problems were magnified, and the minority represented all.

Smartphones have a similar past. Around 2004, "Symbian, Linux" also controlled the smart phone market, with sales of tens of millions of meters, advertised in megapixels, and was poorly photographed and had no function, compared with handheld computers that were difficult to use at the same time.

In fact, after a category is overwhelmed by the transition, it must pass a downturn. The downturn refers more to users, media, and investors' views on the smart watch industry, but the "precipitation period" is the best expression of the state of the smart watch industry itself.

On the one hand, people always overestimate the short-term development of the industry and underestimate the long-term development of the industry. VR and drones are in the period of experience experienced by smart watches. Everyone is still unclear and has high expectations for these industries. Instead, smart watches have experienced a period of enthusiasm and entered a period of steady development but underestimation.

On the other hand, the entire smart watch industry has experienced a period similar to the group-buying website "Hundred Regiments". Consumers have a certain understanding of smart watches. Wrist mobile phones are not smart watches, and smart watches with poor experience are naturally eliminated. The approved smart watch has survived.

Putting aside prejudice and changes in the situation, using the data to look at the wearable device industry represented by smart watches and bracelets, the result is the opposite of "the decline of the smart watch industry."

According to data from GfK China, the sales of wearable devices in 2014 were 31 million units, and in 2015, it was 72 million units. In 2016, it is estimated to exceed 110 million units. This data is comparable to smartphones. According to data from analyst firm Gartner, smartphone sales in 2008 were 137 million units, compared to 172 million units in 2009. Today, the smartphone industry, which has lowered sales forecasts, has seen sales growth of 23.8% in 2009. However, the average annual sales growth of wearable devices has remained at 60%.

In addition, similar to the smartphone market structure, 22% of the market for wearable devices is currently in China – this is the second largest market in the world and will remain.

Smart watch industry precipitates products tend to be more practical

Since 2016, the smart watch industry has entered a period of precipitation, and there will be more rapid changes from the industrial chain to the application ecology.

The upstream industry will be more powerful. Sensors that were previously inaccurate in measurement accuracy by the user will be eliminated, and the market is pushing the industry to produce cheaper and more accurate sensors. The battery built for smart watches will greatly enhance the battery life. The exclusive components of smart watches are constantly appearing, and with the iteration of the watch manufacturer's own hardware solutions, smart watches will become thinner and lighter and more waterproof.

A smart watch will develop an irreplaceable or completely beyond the use of the phone along its own characteristics. For example, the decorative nature of the watch and the characteristics of the human body data can be detected or not done by the mobile phone, and the O2O related services such as the taxi order and the movie ticket can be realized by raising the hand and watching the voice search. Convenience completely surpasses mobile phones.

Although smart watches do not act as completely separate devices or completely replace mobile phones, smart watches have increasingly independent usage scenarios, such as payment, stand-alone GPS and network systems.

The application ecology of smart watches will be improved. More and more mature watch app stores will be developed, and more developers will join and launch apps to increase the playability, usability and decoration of smart watches.

This accumulation period is very similar to the pre-natal period of the iPhone and Android phones. The products that are truly easy to use and widely recognized by the market often need to be iterated several times and developed for several years.

The dilemma of the smart watch industry lies in the construction of the application ecosystem.

The smart watch industry is in the process of precipitation, but it does not mean that it has already jumped out of the topic of "whether the whole industry exists." There are still problems that are worthy of concern in the industry.

Scalability is one of the core of smart products. The rich application greatly meets the user's individual needs, users can use it to work, play games, socialize and so on. But the core of the application's birth is that application developers have focused on smart phones from the past, and now they are scattered to smart phones, smart wearables, VR/AR and other categories, and the number of application developers is limited and excellent developers. Oh, this has a serious impact on the smartwatch industry.

On the one hand, although the smart phone industry is already in a mature stage of slow innovation, the application market tends to be saturated, but its mature application market environment and stable income will still attract the attention of many application developers.


On the other hand, VR/AR is popular, and Oculus, HTC Vive, PSVR 2016 is even called "VR first year", a large number of application developers are engaged in VR applications, or from application to soft and hard combination, go Do AR glasses, various motion recognition devices, and scene construction equipment. The most important point is that although the smart watch industry is in the precipitation stage, it is still seen by many people in the industry.

In general, even if the smart watch industry is in the app dividend period, it is still very attractive to app developers.

But it is worthy of the smart watch industry to pay attention to the attention of the leader in the smart watch industry. First, Android Wear has been treated by Google as an equally important project with Android. It has recently become a pioneering event in the "Google Return" China topic. It has launched an official support for Android Wear and went out to ask for independent operation. app Store". Second, Apple Watch 2 is expected to be in volume production in the second quarter, with significant improvements. Third, in China, Internet leading companies such as WeChat, Alipay, Ink Weather, and Sogou Maps are constantly introducing adaptive applications for smart watches and quickly iterating.

When people start to look at an industry calmly, it is also the eve of the industry's demise or rapid development. The situation that smart watches are valued by industry leaders is worthy of being considered to be on the eve of "prosperous development of the industry", and will be extremely high after the industry, application developers, hardware manufacturers and system developers. s return.