Many of the things that are being done may be "wrong"

Absrtact: For nearly 20 years, technology companies have never stopped competing for the user's wrists. August, the local start-up companies to create smart watch Inwatch will be officially released, this is from the end of the June Royal shell of the electronic release Geak watch, the domestic

For nearly 20 years, technology companies have never stopped competing with their users ' wrists.

August, the local start-up companies to create smart watch Inwatch will be officially released, this is from the end of the June Royal Geak Watch, the company officially released the second smart watch products. Prior to this, the Kickstarter platform on the birth of the grassroots star Pebble Smart watch has also received nearly 300,000 of orders. Seeing small companies in the market set off waves, the technology giants are not idle. Apple has recently been recruiting for its smart watch team to speed up development; Microsoft and Samsung have said they have restarted their smart watch projects. In addition to the smart watch, Fitbit Flex, Jawbone up and other sports health wrist bands are also exerting efforts to occupy the user's wrist.

A battle for the wrist is not yet officially launched, but it can smell the strong gunpowder between the tech giants and the start-up companies.

Why is the wrist so important?

A little bit of perspective will find that in the last 20 years, technology companies have never stopped competing for the user's wrists. 2001, IBM and the Japanese watch manufacturer Citizen launched a smart watch Watchpad with Linux system 1.5; At CES in 2003, Microsoft showcased a smart watch based on spot technology (smart personal object Technology), which provides users with stock quotes, weather, News and other personalized information push.

Microsoft has courted a well-known watch manufacturer, including citizen, fossil, and so on, hoping to jointly promote the development of the market. At that time, Bill Gates even optimistic that in two or three years, Microsoft's smart watch will be able to obtain millions of of the user size, the final evidence that Gates misjudged the situation, spot watch also in 2008 years after the formal withdrawal of the history stage.

After entering the smartphone era, Motorola and Sony have also launched their own smart watches, but the response has been flat.

In fact, there has never been a real winner in the nearly 20-year wrist-equipment war. The fate of these smart watch pioneers is to disappear. Technology companies have tried and tried for years more like their own wishful thinking, and consumers are not buying it.

Now, a new round of the battle of the wrist will be launched, in the run-up to the war, there is actually a question worth thinking-why so many years of technology companies to occupy the user's wrist is infatuated with death? What does this area of the wrist mean for technology companies?

First of all, from the user's use habits, the traditional watch has an inch or so of the screen, and as long as there is a screen, you can display information.

For most of the time after the invention of the watch, the only function of the screen was to show the time. With the evolution of technology, a single time display of many low-end watches are gradually eliminated by the market, because there are too many products can replace its existence, such as the popularity of mobile phones so many low-cost watches lost the market. Interestingly, tech companies are suddenly interested in the once-killed rivals and trying to give them new life in a step-in way. In today's multi-screen era, the watch as the user's most intimate electronic devices, grab it means to control the user's attention to the entrance. Cloud Internet Information and services always need an outlet to release value, this small screen on the wrist is naturally a strategic level entrance.

Second, like other intelligent terminals connected to the human body, the watch screen is an important link to get through the input and output of the information.

In the past, the value of this screen on the wrist was just the output of information--people came to see the time, now the development of touch and sensor technology, the richness of cloud software, allows the watch's screen to complete the loop from input to output, which brings a greater imagination: around this screen, Information can be used in the continuous cycle of input and output to achieve a snowball effect.

For example, as with the pulse of the hand physical distance to the nearest electronic device, after integrating a series of sensors such as gravitational sensors, a smart watch in theory can help users complete a series of steps, Measure blood pressure, heart rate, and even emotional rage, so that people on social networks can disguise their words, and the data won't lie. When these real data are connected to the entire Internet through the screen input of the watch, together with the Internet's software services will be a more imaginative business cycle.

From a more realistic point of view, as the PC market shrinks and the smartphone market slows, the tech giants must find new growth points to keep their performance growing. The reason to choose a watch is because from the user's use of the habit of wearing jewelry at the wrist has been thousands of years of history, since the beginning of the 19th century watch was invented, more than 200 years has also allowed people to develop a tool on the wrist of the habit of wearing a product. Although the popularity of mobile phones has seriously affected the watch industry in the last 20 years, the usage habits of users are still in existence. Compared with the sci-fi-like Google glasses, the public is clearly more willing to accept watches.

It is because the user has the mature use habit, even some traditional sense and the wrist irrelevant product also came to want a piece of. One of the most representative is the sports wristband that has been popular in the last two years. From a technical point of view, pedometer products are actually not suitable for the wrist in such places, which will greatly increase the user's movement data acquisition error, but, whether foreign Fitbit or domestic thump, we are upgrading their products for the wrist belt modelling, In essence, it is because this kind of wear is more consistent with the user's use habits.

Fighting for the wrist.

In less than a year, from Pebble to Inwatch, there have been a lot of smart watches on the market. But even with High-profile Pebble, the project has been online for more than a year and has less than 300,000 orders. You know, Apple's first-generation ipad sold 1 million units in just one months. Do they really need to wear a new electronic product on their wrists? If so, what kind of products will impress them?

Let's take a look at some of the smart watch products that have been on the market in the last year trying to conquer users with what features.

The most common is to remind and push.

Whether positioning themselves as "stand-alone equipment" or "mobile phone accessories", we invariably will inform and push the message as one of the main selling points. These smart watches can be paired with mobile phones via Bluetooth 4.0, which allows you to push phones, text messages, emails, and so on to your watch.

Admittedly, this feature does meet the needs of a subset of users, but for other users, this is a nightmare. Each person's ability to carry information is different, too frequent information push can actually only cause harassment.

Now that people's lives have been broken down by social media and various communication tools, the personal push of smart watches can only worsen the fragmentation. "Forbes" writer Kelly Clay recently complained that Pebble had almost "gone crazy" and that too much information pushed her to concentrate on her work, and she finally gave up after 5 days of use.

To a certain extent, this kind of reminding function is entirely the product of the engineer's thinking: Look at what's in the hand and think what to do--completely without taking into account the psychological complexity and subtlety of the user. In the software age, push is a double-edged sword, let alone with the human body to get along with the wearable equipment. A lot of times, steps are a little bit more of a step backwards. The mastery of this balance is an art. For example, the Jawbone Up Sleep wake feature is considered intimate by many users, while Pebble email reminders become harassment.

In addition to the information of the push, health management is also a lot of entrepreneurs justly scramble to kill the market, but the record of the user's path, steps and other information is really users need it?

Motorola's MOTOACTV, released two years ago, has actually declared that such a product logic is not tenable, except for people who are particularly concerned about their own health, which is also not enough to be the tipping point for the market, and more importantly, it is also difficult to succeed even if it is positioned as a part of the population service Because watch products with professional motion detection features are not new, and face the more inexpensive but professional products such as Fitbit and Jawbone Up, the watches that hit these features are not competitive enough.

In fact, today, the application of innovation in smart watches is still at a very early stage, this phase is more like a function based on the superposition of trial and error, the current participants generally lack of clear enough strategic thinking. And smart watch applause not draw a sharp contrast to the plight of the main fashion line of the health wrist band products. Yahoo CEO has recently issued a free jawbone up to 11,000 employees.

Smart watch and the popularity of the sports hand ring, a cold and a hot in fact there are many worthy of people to think about the problem.

The operation of the ring itself has almost no information to push the function, on the one hand, its role is actually data collection, the user's movement and health data uploaded to the cloud through the mobile phone after the value of the, on the other hand, similar to Jawbone up such products are hot also inseparable from the appearance of fashion.

Based on this, for smart watches, the rush to commercialize commercialization is an act of haste, smart watches need to think about how the screen around the watch to enable information to achieve the input and output of the forward loop and in the design and user experience to do more solid work- After all, the wrist position in the past has been the stage of luxury display, rough design how to long-term retention of users?

Many of the things that are being done may be "wrong"

Although the industry is now advocating a "combination of soft and hard", but in this wave behind the new hardware ecosystem is not yet stereotypes, so entrepreneurs have to do their own to promote the improvement of the hardware system. However, do not let your energy be taken care of the hardware supply chain may be a variety of problems and all the constraints.

From a longer-term perspective, the importance of the wrist and scarcity determines that the product in this position will not only be a single function of the product, in the wrist of the application scenario can be extended a large number of services. And for users, obviously not to meet their own every need to buy a stand-alone equipment, after all, everyone has only two wrist.

As a result, future wrist devices should have as many basic functions as today's smartphones and be able to extend a wide range of applications. and building such a complex ecosystem is actually the expertise of technology giants like Apple and Google.

There is no doubt that the smart devices worn on the wrist will become an integral part of people's lives sooner or later, but no one knows how long the day is.

For large companies with strong risk tolerance, projects such as smart watches will not bones even if they fail, and through constant trial and error can accumulate valuable experience and prepare for a comeback, knowing that technological innovation has never been achieved overnight.

But it is necessary to rethink the direction of innovation at this juncture for the entrepreneurial team that has a poor risk tolerance and bets on "Gbagbo" as a wrist-type device.

For example, the manufacturer of sports wristband has already faced the serious threat of the smart watch manufacturer. This is not alarmist, Shell Electronics recently released Geak watch smart watch one of the main features of the home is to be able to record the user's movement trajectory, step number, heart rate and even sleep. Aside from the practicality of the accuracy and the online platform, it has the function of almost all the mainstream health wrist bands at home and abroad. So the exquisite hardware products that Fitbit now tail develop will probably only become an application on the watch.

Before the eco-system of the wrist-type equipment is yet formed, startups use hardware as a starting point though yes, but if you're counting on hardware to survive, the future is not optimistic, and many attempts at this stage are in fact trying to make a mistake and pave the way for the future of a truly intelligent wrist-style equipment ecosystem.

The battle for the wrist continues, but it is gratifying to find that the technology company's chances of winning the battle were finally bigger than those of the previous wrist battles. For the technology industry, which is still apple-lead, next year's likely iwatch will set the tone for this round of the battle for the wrist, and if Apple cannot open it, then we will have to wait.