My how time has a way of letting us all know how fast it flies! Back in September 2014 an article was written on “The Success of The Smartwatch Relies Hugely on How Well They Connect with Facebook Users”, written by Elena Holodny. Yes, Facebook!
In her article she wrote, “Smartwatches might become mainstream in a couple of years thanks to our obsession with Facebook”. Did she, at this time, have an insight to what the future of social media would look like or become in the coming years?
Also in the article she wrote about the market and where it would be in 4 years stating, “So far the smartwatch market growth has been tepid (at best), but the market may reach $10 billion by 2018, according to the Citi Research report led by Oliver Chen”.
It was also stated that half of that $10 billion market would come from “tech trendsetters who didn’t wear a watch and the other $5 billion coming out of the traditional watch market”. It was during this time that “smartphones” were more a talk of the town than the smartwatch.
So far the smartwatch market growth has been tepid (at best), but the market may reach $10 billion by 2018, according to a Citi Research report led by Oliver Chen.
Half of that market size is expected to come from tech trendsetters who don’t wear watches, and the other $5 billion is going to come out of the traditional watch market.
It was Apple who at the time introduced its Apple Watch; they said that smartwatches had been around for over 10 years. Yes, but the older ones looked nothing like any of the working images we have today. Some of you may remember the “7 segment LED or LCD” watches that had us even thinking about advance functions being on our wrist.
Nevertheless, smartwatches, they said, never caught on and they had their reasons for that as well. One of the more obvious one was price, being too expensive. It was reported that only 14% of US consumers were interested in paying more than $199 for a smartwatch, while most were priced in the mid-$200 range, according to the report. Then there was the bad interface and poor battery life. Who, if anyone, would want this device the question was asked.
Although Apple unveiled its Apple Watch in September 2014, smartwatches have been around for over 10 years.
With all the hype, they just never really caught on. And there are several reasons for that.
The most obvious reason was price — smartwatches at this time, were expensive. Only 14% of US consumers are interested in paying more than $199 for a smartwatch, but most smartwatches cost in the mid $200s, according to the report. Plus, smartwatches tend to have poor user interfaces and poor battery lives.
Oh the complaints kept coming; another major complaint about smartwatches was that they aren’t broadly compatible with most smartphones (even the Apple Watch was only going to work with iPhone). Now remember I am referring to an article that was writing in 2014, not what one would call the “dark ages”.
Now with people wanting to connect their smartwatches to their smartphones, which meant the consumers, viewed their smartwatches as smartphone accessories rather than standalone tech pieces, according to Citi.
So what’s social media got to do with it?
Alright, in order to understand how companies could capitalize on the fact that consumers see smartwatches as smartphone accessories, it’s important to understand what exactly people were doing on their smartphones.
Enters the internet and we were increasingly using mobile web browsing more. Specifically, we were web browsing on mobile apps not as heavily as today. It was in the Citi report that mobile apps in smartwatches would drive the smartwatch market growth. You think?
Some data from this time was surprising but they had no idea of where this technology was headed.
Nowadays, the majority of smartphone users are obsessed, some addicted with checking social media every day, if not hour.
In 2014 digital browsing via mobile apps was growing at an incredible rate. It was reported that form June 2013 to June 2014, mobile app browsing increased by a whopping 52%.
In comparison, mobile web browsing only increased by 17%, and desktop browsing just barely increased by 1% in that year.
This data showed that 57% of smartphone owners were using their smartphone every single day of the month. Meanwhile, it was reported that only 26% of tablet users used their tablet application on a daily basis.
This report showed that people preferred using their smartphone over using their tablets for daily use because smartphones were smaller and portable. With that reporting, analysts “expect that smartwatches could have a similar or higher application usage rate.”
In other word, they are saying that the addition of mobile apps will make the (smart and portable) smartwatch more appealing to consumers.
So far the forecaster hasn’t been too far off base!
You may be wondering just what mobile app it was that attributed to this 25% uses; social media and this did not cover smartphone users under 18! We all know that the 18 and under group are more likely to be using social media than adults………..sure.
As you can see already, with Apple being one of the leaders at the time, they were already moving in the directions that would enable us to access Facebook and Twitter straight from our app.
But the Apple Watch is not going to replace our smartphone is it? That’s not the point.
If you have an internet connected device today and a means of receiving personal data, you are going to check it more times than none. So whatever you are encouraged about doing with your smart watch, social media probably had something to do with it.
I hope you enjoyed and found the information shared in this review interesting and informative. If you have any questions about “My how Smartwatch time flies” or want to leave a COMMENT or your own review, please do so below.