Do you really need a smart watch?

Leung Tech Liang Chen reported on June 26

Do you really need a smart watch?

David Singleton, head of Google's Android project, gave an answer at a Google I / O Developer Conference in Beijing early this morning. You come up with your cell phone 125 times a day, especially if it's placed on the bottom of your handbag and you're bored. This time you need a smart watch.

In the past period, people have seen the release of many smart watches, but now "regular army" came. These Android Wear-powered products are still at the core of notifications, but have achieved a breakthrough over existing products. At least, it does not look like a miniature phone screen.

This trend appears in the industry, for smart watches, is a good direction. BI Intelligence had previously estimated that worldwide smartwatch sales will reach 91.6 million by 2018 and that one in every 20 smartphones will be paired with the smartwatch in the future.

Three months ago, when Google announced the launch of the Android Wear project, the industry was amazed at the smart watch design shown by Motorola Mobility. Rick Ostrow, Motorola's vice president of mobile products, has also concealed his confidence that this product will "solve the real problem of the user"

At this Google I / O Developer Conference in San Francisco, USA, every executive who speaks is wearing a smartwatch. In fact, Google uses smartwatches as the highlight of its device-specific lecture. "In a multi-screen world, smartwatches will be your key, as well as a bridge between your phone and your body." This is the Google-defined smartwatch.

David Singleton details everything Google can do with smartwatches, syncing memos, voice actions, email reminders, and a few common application features. Since Google invested in Uber, he also demonstrated the process of getting his car through a watch. The samples on his hand came from LG and Motorola Mobile. In his opinion, Google has just started, voice control is the most critical point of view, and will add new features in the coming months.

At the end of the speech, Google announced that LG and Samsung's smartwatch products will go to Google stores later, and that Motorola Mobility will be available in the summer.

However, netizens and analysts do not seem optimistic about the release of smartphones that have been hyped by previous media.

A foreign netizen even directly Tucao said that can not wait to see because of the use of smart boarding pass boarding the airport leading to confusion. Another netizen said, "I've been wearing a watch for 20 years and I'm not sure if I'm going to wear it again."

And this kind of functional complaints, analysts are more calmly think that the release of smart watches at this time is only a terminal vendor's position on Google.

Forrest senior analyst Cao Yuqin said that the release of Samsung is derived from the user's needs to enhance viscosity. "From the first generation of Galaxy smartphones to the current fifth generation, although the software and performance have improved, but the hardware changes are not so obvious." He is also skeptical about whether Motorola Mobile will sustain its long-term renewal.

Another smartwatch practitioner is even more radical, "manufacturers just in conjunction with Google's release, the visible product is only more emphasis on demonstration." In his view, from a technical point of view, the product is still thin and light The big challenge is that because of the hardware challenges of the necessary sensors and communication modules in smartwatches, such as WiFi, it is almost impossible to make them slimmer due to the impact of power consumption.

May affect the pace of Google camp release factors, as well as pressure from Apple. Although Apple has long put forward the concept of iWatch, but the product has yet to be seen. However, recently, foreign media broke the news that iWatch will be put into operation next month and citing Rosenblatt's analyst Brian Blair's view that it will be officially released in October.

At this point, indeed for Samsung and other Google camp manufacturers to seize the market. So its pilot production of small-scale, and keep watching, is a correct choice.

The industry is maturing

"Small size and flexible screens increase the cost of the hardware, and now the design of the product is so complex that the watch has such a high demand on the input interface that users interact more frequently." Frog Senior Design, Creative Design Yang Xi eyes in the smart watch so many deficiencies, and this is the status of such products.

Xu Jingquan, general manager of MediaTek's new business unit responsible for the development of smart phone solutions, said that subject to the size and material of the end product, the impact on the manufacturer's input. Killer-targeted applications for smartwatches have not yet appeared, and there has not been a design that satisfies users with respect to usage scenarios and power consumption.

From the main function of the current point of view, seamless connection of other terminal equipment, and human health monitoring is the most important function of smart watches.

But on the other hand, with the release of products from international manufacturers, Cao Yuqin said that the upstream industry chain has matured and the operating system provided by Google can also support the use of the product, together with the promotion of enterprises such as Qualcomm and Samsung , So that consumers will gradually accept smart watches.

In fact, many start-up companies and brand manufacturers have seen the new opportunities brought by smart wearable technology, and put into smart watch research and development. However, the former is subject to resource constraints and its system integration and experience design needs to be improved.

This year, chip makers have been made to force wearable devices, especially smart watches. MediaTek unveiled its turnkey solution at Computer Expo Taipei this year to integrate microprocessors and communication modules with a variety of networking and simplified development processes so its developers can focus more on product appearance and innovative features As well as service and background cloud development.

Intel also set up the Intelligent New Equipment Group, which is considered internally as an area of ​​innovation in computing and recruits talented people who have experience in consumer products from technology companies such as Apple and Amazon. Qualcomm was the first to release a concept product smart watch Toq at the end of last year. Its insiders also revealed that Qualcomm is well positioned to design and manufacture processors for wearable devices.

However, there are also some eager to launch the product to seize the market, the manufacturer chose to migrate the overall solution of mobile phones to smart watch products. Gu Xiaobin, CEO of Nutshell Technology, believes that it is not feasible to take such a shortcut because the watch has two basic requirements, standby time and volume, and some products in the market do not have the key to user experience.

On the other hand, the insider disclosed that Qualcomm mainly used ARM architecture on wearable devices, and did not launch a self-designed architecture similar to a smart phone. After the last product was released, there was no further release. In other words, chip manufacturers that can mass-produce the solutions currently in the field of watches are still just test-ups.

Will impact the electronic watch market

Gu Xiaobin said that if it is purely electronic products, then now the phone is enough, if you want to watch back to the wrist again, more importantly, pay attention to beauty and fashion.

However, the cross-border products of fashion and technology often give the impression that it is very abrupt. Yang Xi explained that this is because the fashion and technology circle to see each other is completely different from the two. "For the fashion circle, cloth, wool and felt are their raw materials, so using plastics, paper and even LEDs has been a big breakthrough for them, but it has been eliminated for the tech circle Many years of things.As for the technology circle is more concerned about technology, such as virtual reality, material deformation and so on.

In fact, the technology community is becoming more aware of the importance of fashion for FMCG after it is considered the launch of the iPod, a combination of fashion and technology. Xu Jingquan think, smart watch solutions will also be more fashion sense.

Tom Foldesi, senior director of Intel's new Intelligent Device Group, said that Intel's key guiding philosophy in the development of wearable products is the emphasis on style and personalization.

In Yang Xi's opinion, he prefers to replace intelligence with "spirituality," which means more understanding of the user. It means that the product should react to the user's actions accordingly, and the user is not bound to the screen.

Of course, from the reality, the watch market will move in two directions. Million or more products will still maintain the existing hand-custom-like luxury line, and in the following 5,000 products, smart watches will be a large number.

Cao Yuqin said that on the one hand, the price of 2,000 yuan to 3,000 electronic watches will be the direct impact of smart watches; the other hand, watches will be combined with the bracelet, or even replace the latter, and then remove the white card manufacturers.

The aforementioned smart watch practitioners also said that Casio and other manufacturers will face the competition of smart watches, after all, electronic watches look stereotyped, the function is also very simple.

What can be seen is that domestic manufacturers will certainly enter the market through third-party design companies or themselves and may sell them simultaneously with smartphones to gain a certain market share. However, subject to the user experience and technology gap, domestic manufacturers in the short term or difficult with Samsung, Motorola Mobile and other shoulder to shoulder.