The authoritative market research company IDC says smartwatch sales dropped 51.6 percent last quarter from the year previous, although it suggests that the results are distorted by Apple's vast success last year. In 3Q15, when the Apple Watch was generally available for the first time, Apple sold 3.9 million units, IDC said, accounting for 70.2 percent of the market. This … [Read more...]
SmartTrack: A Touchpad Within Arm’s Reach
Smartwatches put a powerful computer on your wrist, but at the cost of a little bitty screen and keyboard. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute’s Future Interfaces Group are working on that, turning your arm into an interactive surface. SmartTrack turns your forearm into a swiping, touching input device from wrist to elbow. Unlike … [Read more...]
Canalys Predicts 7.5M Cellular Smartwatches This Year; 54M by 2020
The market research house Canalys is projecting that 53.6 million cellular smartwatches -- ones that don't need to be tethered to phones -- will be sold in the the year 2020. At first blush, that looks like a pretty enthusiastic prediction, particularly in light of the company's wildly optimistic count of 7.5 million being sold this year. The underlying logic, though, … [Read more...]
Google Reportedly Readies Android Wear Watches of its Own
The website Android Police is reporting that Google is getting ready to ship a pair of Android Wear smartwatches under its own brand. This bodes ill for the health of Android Wear. The whole point of Android Wear was to create a software platform that OEMs could basically plug into hardware, but only about a half-dozen companies -- all of them pretty big, but at least one of … [Read more...]
Tata Group Develops Smart Watch For Its Own Enterprise Use
When you're as big as the Tata Group (and if you don't know about the company, you should read up on it), you can develop hardware products just for your own internal use. That's apparently what the company is doing with a piece of wristware building a safety watch for workers in several of its subsidiaries. The Economic Times of India reports that Tata CIO Gopichand … [Read more...]
Smart Watch Sales Outpace Swiss Watch Sales
The market research company Strategy Analytics is reporting that, for the first time, more smart watches were sold in the last quarter of 2015 than Swiss watches, by a margin of 8.1 million to 7.9 million. The company said that the smart watch market grew 316 percent from the year previous, while sales of Swiss watches declined 5 percent. Analysts estimated that 8 out of 10 … [Read more...]
Tag Heuer Sneaks $1800 Smartwatch
You might want to mark your calendar for November 9, because that's apparently when Tag Heuer is going to set a new top price point for Android Wear watches. Several reports gathered by Ars Technica point to that date and an $1800 price tag for an upgradeable watch powered by an Intel SoC. There's a web site that counts down to the launch date, but have patience because it … [Read more...]
Samsung Great S2 Round Smartwatch Goes on Sale Friday
We've written before about the round Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch. The company announced today that the watch will go on sale October 2, but it may be a little hard to find. Although you'll be able to get it at Samsung's own site and Amazon, if you want to get hands on at launch, you'll have to make the a pilgrimage to your local Best Buy or to Macy's main store in Herald Square, … [Read more...]
Omate Announces TrueSmart Standalone Smartwatch Update
Omate was one of the first smartwatch companies, and carved its own path with standalone devices that used SIM chips and didn't need to be tethered to a smart phone. The company today announced its latest update: the TrueSmart+, based on Android 5.1 (Lollipop) and a custom UI. Apps for the watch will be downloadable from Omate's "OStore." A 1.5-inch touch screen is the main … [Read more...]
Runtastic Launches the Moment Smartwatch
Smartwatch Week continues, with the Adidas-owned Runtastic introducing the Moment, its first conventional smartwatch. Though it also sells a heart rate monitor and the Orbit fitness tracker, Runtastic is better known as a leading fitness app developer, claiming 70 million registered users. The Moment looks like an analog watch rather than a tracker. It's aimed squarely at … [Read more...]