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Just 6.8M Smartwatches Sold Last Year, the Apple Watch Launch Set to Shake up the Market

RaduTyrsina

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smartwatch sales 2014.jpg

A fresh report coming from research company Smartwatch Group is estimating that just 6.8 million smartwatches were sold last year. The average price was at around $189, which is down by 16 percent from the selling price of $225 seen in 2013.

The total market volume in 2014 was $1.29 billion, up from $711 million in 2013. Overall unit sales have seen a big 82 percent year over year increase. While these are big numbers, it's something pretty normal for a nascent industry.

Pascal Koenig, managing partner of Smartwatch Group, said the following:

"The early announcement of the Apple Watch in September hurt sales of competitive products, and there was no available product offering from Apple. While offerings in the wellness and sports market from companies like Garmin, Fitbit, Withings and Polar are based on solid use cases, the consumer market has not yet picked up.

So far, the mobile phone companies around Google's operating system Android Wear have not been able to deliver on their promise. As several times in the past, it comes down to Apple to reach a breakthrough in the consumer market."

Smartwatch Group said that 89 companies from 18 countries sold smartwatches in 2014 and estimated that an additional 140 companies are working on new smartwatch devices.

The launch of the Apple Watch is said to have the greatest effect on the market, raising the average selling price of smartwatches to $290 this year. Total market sales have been predicted to reach $8.7 billion in 2015.

Source: AppleInsider
 

s2mikey

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Curious to see how these watches sell. I question how "useful" they really will be or how practical they'll be for tasks that people use phones or tablets for now. And, for people looking for a fitness type watch already have a ton of great choices out there that cater to that market at much lower prices and less fluff.

Let me get some popcorn.....;)
 

twerppoet

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Useful is, of course, subjective. Here are the things I see coming that make it worth a go. At least for the base model. I'm not sure you could convince me to purchase the more expensive models based solely on better fashion.

Notifications: Every beep, buzz, vibrate, ring, and other mysterious noises you iPhone makes will no longer require you to dig it out of your pocket or purse to find out what's just happened, on the chance that it might be important. Worth $349 by itself, no.

Health Tracking: Hardly the only solution, but with it's deep integration with iOS and the iPhone it has the potential to be one of the 'best' health device. Will it be that on launch? Maybe. But it will almost certainly get there over a few updates. Worth $349. Not by itself.

Brief tasks: Many of the simple things you do with your phone that take only a few seconds or minutes will be possible from the watch. Answer an SMS message, set a timer, add a reminder or appointment, dictate a brief note, add an item to your shopping list. Even a short phone call, Dick Tracy style. This by itself could be worth $349 for some people. For me, it's just another few percentage points.

Third party apps: Limited at first, but eventually these will be the most compelling feature of the Apple Watch. When the iPhone came out it was mostly a phone and internet browser. Apps were almost an afterthought. When native apps came out the imagination and hard work of developers quickly turned apps into 'the' reason for owning an iPhone. These days the phone part of the iPhone is the least important feature for many people.

There is almost nothing you can do on the watch that you could not do on the iPhone, but that's not the same things as saying that there is nothing that won't be better on a watch. When the iPad came out Steve Jobs said it needed to do some things better than an iPhone, and some things better than a laptop. It didn't need to do it all better, just enough to make it worthwhile for a large number of people.

The Apple Watch is going to be the same. It doesn't have to do anything that an iPhone can't. It does need to do some things much better, enough better that people will be willing to buy one.

Which brings us back to the subjective things. The Apple Watch won't be worth it for many people; however it will probably be worth it for a fairly large number.

I didn't have to have an iPod, or an iPad, or an iPhone. Everything important thing they did I could accomplish by other methods. But it seemed obviously to me that they would do those things much better than the tools I already had. I gambled, and I won.

The same is true for the Apple Watch. I see it's potential to be much better at some things I do, or want to do. I'm going to gamble again. Though only on the base model. At least for the first generation.
 

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