Rise Of The Smartwatch

When it comes to telling the time, most of us dig a Smartphone/mobile phone out of our pockets but as technology would have it, this is all bound to change in the next few years thanks to companies like Apple, Nike, Sony and other several startups that are aiming to replace the traditional wristwatch on your wrist with a device that could best be described as a Smartwatch.

The smartwatch won’t replace the Smartphone but instead, they will be interlinked and the smartwatch will act as a control panel for your Smartphone.

The smartwatch will still tell the time, no doubt about that but they will also have other bonus features that will make it obsolete to dig out your Smartphone

out of your pocket e.g. Sony this year released their Smartwatch; a two inch square screen that is capable of displaying e-mails, twitter posts as well as other media derived from an android Smartphone. Pebble is also a smartwatch that can play music, display the weather, text and other pieces of information straight from your Smartphone (expected to be in sales next year).

“The wrist becomes a remote screen where you now have the ability to control your phone with a number of different applications,” said Stephen Sneeden, Sony’s product marketing manager. “By virtue of the intelligence of the Smartphone, it’s going to help to redefine what goes on your wrist.”

One of the other main reasons according to Mr. Sneeden as to why the smartwatch will catch on is due to the fact that most business executives endorse it because it

allows them to interact with their phones in meetings without seeming rude as well as the fact that flight attendants did not require passengers to turn off their watches during takeoff and landing.

However, despite the wristwatch evolution, offering people an extra screen on their watch might just not be enough and from Hosain Rahman’s point of view, (chief executive of Jawbone, a San Francisco-based maker of headsets and portable speakers for the Smartphone) he thought that the devices available for the wrist should strike a balance between technology and fashion in order to entice a broader audience, particularly the younger generation who have given up on the wristwatch.

“I don’t know if the mass market wants a big display on their wrist if they have a display in their pocket,” he said. “The wrist is used for fashion and expression. You can’t just make something functional, and it can’t just do fashion, either.

“If you’re going to do this well,” he said, “you have to merge the two.”

Although Mr. Rahman suggested that people could own several devices which they could slip on and off throughout the day quoting that “You don’t wear the same thing when you go running that you do when you’re going to dinner”, consumers are less than likely to purchase multiple wrist devices/smartwatches as it would be cumbersome and also derail from the main purpose of having a wristwatch in the first place.