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from the watch-that-is-essential-to-breathing... dept.
You would probably say the same if you were Eric Migicovsky, who runs smartwatch maker Pebble, whose business model involves selling people computers to wear on their bodies.
Even so, Migicovsky's confidence in the wider trend fuelling that business is notable, at a time when despite Apple and Google's moves into the smartwatch market, there is still widespread scepticism about what exactly these devices are for.
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So, what are smartwatches for? Migicovsky compares the current state of the market with smartphones in 2007, in the early days of iPhone and Android.
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For smartwatches in 2015, those core use cases appear to be activity-tracking and notifications – 90% of Pebble owners use notifications every day, according to Migicovsky – with watch-face customisation also scoring highly in Pebble's case.
On paper the case for something like Google Glass becoming indispensible seems stronger. Is Pebble right?
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ThePhilips on Friday July 17 2015, @08:15AM
For smartwatches in 2015, those core use cases appear to be activity-tracking and notifications – 90% of Pebble owners use notifications every day, according to Migicovsky – with watch-face customisation also scoring highly in Pebble's case.
You know you are in a deep deep niche, if change of wallpaper is so high on the usage list. If the smartwatches were anywhere close to versatile, and loaded with immediately useful functions, a commonplace thing like customization wouldn't be even mentioned.
Otherwise, the smartphone alone is more than enough.
The only overly optimistic scenario of future irreplaceability of smartwatches, is the smartwatches replacing the smartphones. But I think any decent holographic/etc screen is still far far away. And you can't replace smartphones if you can't deliver the audio/visual content in a competing fashion.
IMO some form of lightweight VR goggles have much more chances in future than the smartwatches. Closer to headphones. Closer to the the eyes. Closer to the ears. A hand watch? It solves no problem.