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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, Interesting) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday July 17 2015, @11:11AM
Right now there's a whole lot of technology that may or may not be cool, but just isn't sticking. People are trying to find the next big thing after the iPhone, and it hasn't happened. What I don't see is a compelling reason to have any of this stuff. In 25 words or less, none of these things can explain why I must get one of these and use it. The iPhone had that. If you buy one, you get a tiny computer that does what a stack of other devices used to do, and it's a phone. If you buy a Google glass, you get - no one ever answered that. If you buy an Amazon echo, you get a creepy thing that listens to your conversations. If you buy a Pebble, you get a smartwatch that doesn't work well with Android. (I tried to develop for one once. Yuck.) We're not getting anything compelling right now. There's some mild interest in these new technologies, but they're not a must. Progress seems to be diffuse right now, with nothing really standing out. That means something big is probably just around the corner, something no one is currently anticipating.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Friday July 17 2015, @10:43PM
I'm anticipating a particular development. Furthermore, as Alan Kay noted, the best way to predict the future is to invent it. That's why I've been working on it since Mar 2015. I won't say what it is but I'll leave these hashes: ce4a80f063acc6f7845fcd595b35bc32 and 32582cccc06bfa2b8266accd18514ed111029cd8. Even if I'm not the first to release it, I'll have some very small gratification that I was working towards it.
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