Telecom Lead Asia: As Samsung, Apple and Microsoft are accelerating their smart watch plans, the number of smart watches shipped in 2013 will touch more than 1.2 million.
Contributing factors include the high penetration of smart phones in many world markets, the wide availability and low cost of MEMS sensors, energy efficient connectivity technologies such as Bluetooth 4.0, and a flourishing app ecosystem.
“The strong potential emergence of smart watches can be attributed to several reasons,” says senior analyst Joshua Flood at ABI Research.
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The key players in the smart watch segment will be the Italian smart watch maker, I’m Watch; Apple’s iWatch, Samsung’s Galaxy Altius and Microsoft’s new touch-enabled watch for its Windows-based smart phones and tablets.
Though smart watches have been around for the last decade, the wearable computing device has failed to take off. Earlier, these devices looked ugly, were too bulky, had weak functionality, or the battery life was not good enough.
However, over the last nine months a number of new smart watches have emerged that could change consumers’ perceptions, according to ABI Research.
The wearable computing device can be split into four categories: notification types, voice operational smart watches, hybrid smart watches, and completely independent smart watches.
Notification type devices are the MetaWatch and Cookoo smart watches, for example, offering alerts for incoming calls, messages and other notifications.
Voice operational smart watches enable users to conduct calls and speak some commands via the device such as Martian’s smart watch.
Standalone smart watches with their own OS are moving beyond a smartphone accessory.
With the potential to be purchased as a standalone product without the need for a smartphone, they offer high functionality and can connect to other consumer devices like audio speakers.
