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Apple is the captain of a sinking ship:
Maybe not everyone is convinced they need a smartwatch? According to a new industry report from IDC out this morning, smartwatch shipments experienced "significant" declines in the third quarter, as total shipments were down 51.6 percent from the same time last year. Just 2.7 million units were shipped in Q3 2016 versus 5.6 million in Q3 2015. While IDC offers several explanations as to why sales are dropping – including issues related to launch timings, Android Wear delays, and more – the numbers still indicate how smartwatches are having a hard time finding traction among a majority of consumers.
Of course, we need to keep in mind that Apple Watch is the market leader among smartwatches – its Series One device accounted for the majority of shipments in the quarter (1.1 million units shipped, a 72 percent year-over-year decline). That means its ups and downs will have an outsize impact on the industry's numbers at large.
Another factor mentioned: potential Apple Watch customers may have been waiting for second generation version.
On the heels of Misfit announcing the Phase, its first hybrid smartwatch, a bunch of other Fossil Group brands want in on that action. Chaps, Diesel, Emporio Armani, and Michael Kors have all added hybrid smartwatches to their connected devices lineup. All of of their smarthwatches use traditional, analog watch displays, but you can track fitness and delivery notifications on them with just a few taps.
Those brands join other Fossil Group-owned brands that have put their spin on smartwatches and fitness trackers. The Fossil brand launched its Q line of wearables last year, which now includes Android Wear watches, discreet fitness trackers, and hybrid smartwatches. Fossil dabbled in wearables years ago, well before modern fitness trackers or the Apple Watch existed. But the company really began its push into that marketplace after acquiring Misfit last year. Since then, not only has Fossil adapted some of Misfit's technology into its wearables, but Misfit has also taken pages out of its parent company's playbook, particularly with the launch of its Phase hybrid smartwatch.
If smartwatches don't have this feature, I'm just not interested.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday October 27 2016, @12:39AM
There's a lot of self imposed limitations
1) It doesn't know anything about my PC. It only talks to my phone. It also talks wifi and its kinda weird if I'm in the bathroom at work and its connected via wifi all the way back to my desk charging phone. There are linux PAM modules that can sniff BT or so I've heard and if you could fool the watch into thinking the PC is a stereo speaker maybe, maybe...
2) Possible. Mostly it keeps trying to connect until it gives up after an hour or something and gives me an annoying disconnected icon.
3) So the output of #2. The problem is as per #1 it will be a, well, poop alarm, because my giant near tablet sized phone sits on the charger at work and the watch stays on my wrist. I'll probably only make this mistake a couple times before being known as the "help, my poop is being stolen" guy. I suppose the only way it could possibly be worse is if it automatically connected my watch microphone to my phone speaker "so you can yell at the thief" and instead all they hear is flushing and other noises.
4) Darn good idea. Of course I already have a wireless key for my car and I've been thinking about buying one for home for convenience.
5) eh wat? And then I'll reply with supersonic lead or ?
6) Believe it or not I've done a lot of this with misterhouse and some perl scripts and some insteon sensors and controllers. It is incredibly handy when you're carrying laundry baskets. Its not a bad idea. Sooner or later someone will make a BT sniffer with relay contacts and I already own insteon I/O modules so this would be about 20 minutes of struggle with misterhouse. One problem is you'd have to do some kind of signal strength calibration or it'll go off in adjacent rooms but not in the corners or who knows. Basement door open = turn on light is like the simplest most awesome thing ever, don't even need IR sensors. OR a watch.
7) It kinda sorta does that already, its in 1% illumination mode 24x7 and when I hold my wrist to look at it, it goes 100%. And its bright enough in the sun, for me anyway. Its not advanced enough that I could do a ridiculous breakdancing move and it could blast some 80s rap automatically. I'm not sure I want it to do that. I can control my audio playback and sometimes its easier to flip the watch and tap pause than dig the phone out of my pocket.
7a) Someday someone is gonna embed full accelerometers and stuff in a set of rings and we'll be able to send sign language to our phones. Not there yet. It can sense my arm wiggling and apparently strange boxing like shakings can signal to the thing but its so annoying it aint happening.
It does hook up to if as in "if then then that" or whatever its called exactly, kind of like "Scratch programming for adults" which might make it possible to implement some of your ideas. The problem is it doesn't expose much to IF other than like battery level.