The heart of Google Android Wear is immortal. Is there any way for smart watches?

Android Wear is regarded by Google as a parallel project with Android. However, after 20 13 and 20 14, the topic of smart watches was frozen by the media and there were few headlines.

Smart watches inherit the form of traditional watches, but in essence they are more like electronic consumer goods that continue from PC, smart phone and Pad. Despite this, compared with drones and VR that look tall, the form and concept of smart watches are too inconspicuous to create scientific and technological topics that attract readers' attention and are abandoned in the headlines of the media.

Due to the "abandonment" of the media, consumers, media and investors have begun to doubt the rationality of the existence of smart watches. At the same time, a wave of investigation reports are constantly being interpreted by the media, and smart watches are not easy to use and practical, and users are not sticky.

Smart watches seem to have no prospects.

Is it "no prospect" to be "abandoned" by the media

Incomplete interpretation of the survey data leads to prejudice, and the inevitable problems are magnified, and a few represent all.

Smartphones have a similar past. Around 2004, "Symbian, Linux" also dominated the smart phone market, with sales of tens of millions of pixels. It was complained that the quality of photography was poor and there was no function, and it was also compared with the PDA which was difficult to use at the same time.

In fact, after a category is excessively hot, it will inevitably experience a period of downturn. The downturn refers more to the views of users, media and investors on the smart watch industry, but the "precipitation period" is the best expression of the state of the smart watch industry itself.

On the one hand, people always overestimate the short-term development of industries and underestimate the long-term development of industries. VR and drones are in the period that smart watches have experienced. It is not clear to everyone that they have high expectations for these industries. On the contrary, smart watches have experienced a boom period and entered a period of steady development but underestimation.

On the other hand, the entire smart watch industry has experienced a period similar to the group buying website "Hundred Regiments War". Consumers have a certain understanding of smart watches. Wrist phones are not smart watches. Smart watches with poor experience are naturally eliminated, and smart watches recognized by users survive.

Aside from prejudice and changes in the status quo, we use data to look at the wearable device industry represented by smart watches and bracelets. The result is just the opposite of "the smart watch industry is declining".

According to the data of GfK China, the sales volume of wearable devices in 20100000 will be 30100000 units, 72 million units in 20 15 years, and it is expected to exceed100000 units in 20 16 years. This data is comparable to smartphones. According to Gartner's data, the sales volume of smartphones in 2008 was 65.438+0.37 billion, and in 2009 it was 65.438+0.72 billion. Today, the sales of the smartphone industry, where manufacturers lowered their sales expectations, increased by 23.8% in 2009. However, the average annual sales growth of wearable devices has remained at 60%.

In addition, similar to the smart phone market structure, 22% of the wearable device market is in China, which is the second largest market in the world and will remain so.

Smart watches are often more practical.

Since 20 16, the smart watch industry has entered a precipitation period, and there will be faster changes from the industrial chain to the application ecology.

The upstream of the industry will be stronger. Sensors with inaccurate measurement accuracy before will be eliminated by users, and the market will promote the upstream production of cheaper and more accurate sensors. The battery specially built for smart watches will greatly enhance the endurance of watches. The unique components of smart watches are constantly emerging. With the iteration of hardware solutions of watch manufacturers, smart watches will become thinner and more waterproof.

Smart watches will develop along their own characteristics to be irreplaceable or completely beyond the use of mobile phones. For example, the decorative function of watches and the ability to detect human data are all things that mobile phones can't do or can't do well. Instead, they rely on raising their hands to watch and voice search to realize O2O-related services such as taxi booking and movie ticket booking, which is more convenient than mobile phones.

Although smart watches will not be completely independent devices, nor will they completely replace mobile phones, smart watches will have more and more independent usage scenarios, such as payment, independent GPS, network systems and so on.

The application ecology of smart watches will be improved. More and more mature watch application stores will be developed, and more developers will join and launch applications to increase the playability, practicality and decoration of smart watches.

This accumulation period is very similar to the early days of the birth of iPhone and Android phones. Products that are really easy to use and widely recognized by the market often need to be iterated several times and developed for several years.

The dilemma of smart watch industry lies in the construction of application ecology.

The smart watch industry is in the precipitation period, but it does not mean that it has jumped out of the topic of "whether the whole industry exists", and there are still problems worthy of industry attention.

Extensibility is one of the cores of intelligent products, and rich applications greatly meet the individual needs of users, who can use it for office, games and social activities. However, the core of application birth-application developers used to focus on smart phones, but now they are scattered to smart phones, smart wearables, VR/AR and other categories. The number of application developers is limited and there are few outstanding developers, which has a serious impact on the smart watch industry.

On the one hand, although the smart phone industry is in the mature stage of slow innovation and the application market tends to be saturated, its mature application market environment and stable income will still attract the attention of many application developers.

On the other hand, VR/AR is very popular, and 20 16 of Oculus, HTC Vive and PSVR is even called "the first year of VR". A large number of application developers devote themselves to VR applications, or turn from applications to software and hardware, making AR glasses, various motion recognition devices and scene construction devices. The most important point is that although the smart watch industry is in the precipitation period, it is still seen by many people in the industry.

In general, even if the smart watch industry is in the application dividend period, it is still less attractive to application developers.

But for the smart watch industry, fortunately, the leaders of the smart watch industry attach importance to it. First, Android Wear is regarded as an equally important project by Google, and it has recently become the forerunner of the topic of "Google's return" to China. In cooperation with Mobvoi, the "Ask App Store" officially supported by Android Wear and independently operated by Mobvoi was launched. Second, Apple Watch 2 is expected to be mass-produced in the second quarter, which has been greatly improved. Thirdly, in China, leading Internet companies, including WeChat, Alipay, Ink Weather, sogou Map, etc., are constantly launching smart watch adaptation applications, and iterating rapidly.

When people begin to look at an industry calmly, it is also the eve of its imminent demise or rapid development. The situation that smart watches are valued by industry leaders deserves to be considered as the eve of "rapid development of the industry", and then it will have very high returns for the upstream of the industry, application developers, hardware manufacturers and system developers.