A couple years ago, when Steve Jobs announced an amazing product called the iPhone. Yeah it was this huge innovation, full touchscreen and a single physical button. But was it accepted by everyone entirely? No. But did it become a huge success later on? Yeah. Of course there were apprehensions; touchscreens are fragile, it’s going to be hard to type, it’s going to take a while to adapt. But in the end, it revolutionized the market to such an extent that a phone is by default visualized as having a touch screen.
Right now it’s a dead instrument that is capable of doing only a single function- tell time.
Now bring the same innovation to your watch. Right now it’s a dead instrument that is capable of doing only a single function- tell time. And it does that well, just like how a brick phone can make a call. But what if you had more power than that? Don’t you want your watch to be responsive? And the obvious answer is yes. Because people want to be connected all the time. And they want to achieve that in the laziest way possible. That’s why the Facebook App is more popular than it’s website. Because it’s there when you need it to be.
Now back to the topic, smartwatches? YES! I’m not trying to imply that the products out there now are the goldmine. Obviously there is a lot of work that has to be done. But the concept sounds alluring. Imagine the time when tablets were being introduced. You must have thought, what do I need a huge phone for? But what are you reading this article on now? So the last time, the manufacturers thought of advertising something bigger that a phone, now they’re going for something smaller. Hey, it could work out.
For the normal person, bringing up a phone from your pocket to your hands, unlocking the device, pulling down the notification bar to check out your messages is a very very tedious work. What if all that could be reduced to a single motion of twisting your hand right side up and glancing at the watch. There you have it. New level of laziness, unlocked!! This device could actually work out. What happens when your phone is too far away? Yeah I won’t pick up that call either. Just swipe on your smartwatch now to attend your customer care call (face it, no one else calls you anyway)! The thing about watches is that you never have to take them off and place them somewhere else. It’s always going to be there with you. You can truly be connected! You can now post arm height pictures on Facebook about the hip new restaurant you’re at! Yeah!!
It’s always going to be there with you. You can truly be connected!
Think about all the cool games you’ll be able to play. They’re not going to be super HD graphics with lots of gore and warfare going on, but they will be the kind of games you could waste 5 minutes on. What if there’s a game where you have to whack on squirrels when you see them. That’s not going to be the game of the year, but it is going to kill time with the queue at some shop you’re waiting at. I don’t know about you but playing accelerometer games with my arm sounds totally rad!
Probably the most annoying thing about listening to music on a phone is, changing to the next track. I really don’t want to spend a few seconds to pull up the music app and change the track. I want to be able to bring up my wrist and hit a button. Or may be shake my wrist two times to skip the current track, and shake it three times to move to the previous track. Hey, that sounds like a watch!
So the utility is already there. It’s up to the manufacturers to back it up. That would involve a huge cost cut. An auxiliary device isn’t worth being priced at 20k. And there would have to be major hardware improvements to be made. First up is the battery. No one wants to charge their smartwatch everyday. They want it to last longer than their smartphone. The follow-up for that would be to make sure the device doesn’t heat up. A warm palm is one thing, a hot wrist is just an irritation. But the most essential thing would be to make sure that the device, being a watch, always shows the time!
So the utility is already there.
It’s going to be interesting to watch how smartphones are going to be accepted by the people. It’s going to be even more interesting watching how the manufacturers are going to play this game. Let’s wait and ‘watch’.
Image Source: Business Insider