Author | Wang Jinwang

Source| Leifeng Net a>

Produced | Leifeng Network Industry Group

One ​​day in 1904, a pilot named Dumont found his friend Cartier and complained that he could not easily take out his pocket watch to check the time during the flight.

At that time, few people knew what a watch looked like. The old pocket watch was widely used in Western society.  

Although the pocket watch is exquisite and beautiful, its portability is not good, especially in the driving environment where the attention needs to be highly concentrated, watching the time with the pocket watch is like the current driver driving. Mobile phones are not "friendly" either.

As a top jeweler and a famous watch manufacturer, Cartier thought of a very straightforward way to solve this "product demand" for old friends. ;——Fix the pocket watch on the wrist with a belt and buckle.

Looking back now, the concept of "wristband + pocket watch = watch" is a bit crude, but it created the first real watch. Prototype.  

The emergence of smart watches has also experienced such simple and crude ideas.

Wristband + mobile phone = smart watch?

In 1999, Samsung launched a "smart watch" called SPH-WP100.

At that time, smart phones had not had time to popularize. This smart watch borrowed from the mobile phone of the feature phone era, or it can be said that it was originally worn on the wrist Phone.

At the product launch conference, Samsung executives stated that the traditional mobile phone (feature phone) market is saturated and it is urgent to seek a breakthrough.

How to further seek breakthroughs in the mobile phone market was indeed a problem at the time.

That year, Andy·Rubin’s Android team had not yet been established, and Jobs, who returned to Apple, was still working hard in the PC field, and it was still in the mobile phone industry. Leading boss Nokia is looking forward to the first smartphone equipped with Symbian system to be officially launched, and it will take another year to wait.

Samsung’s response strategy at the time was to “invent a new product that meets the needs of young people in the mobile communications era”, which is officially called“ Watch-style mobile phone” SPH-WP100.

In the advertisement after the release of this product, it was officially announced that the SPH-WP100 with a built-in small microphone and earpiece and a monochrome LCD screen supports 90 minutes of The talk time is the same as most mobile phones at that time, this product still retains an extended antenna.

However, shortly after this product went on the market, it was forced to stop production.

Just like tying a pocket watch to the wrist, it’s hard to become a real watch after all. SPH-WP100 eventually competes with HP HP-01, SEIKO T001 TV watch, IBM Watchpad and Apple iPad Nano have become milestone products on the growth path of smart watches, but they failed to become mainstream after all.  

Apple-made “table” butterfly effect

Hegel said that existence is reasonable.

The emergence of watches is to make it easier to watch the time, and the emergence of the concept of smart watches is for technology companies to integrate mainstream technology The product is integrated into this wrist watch that is always unattended.

They seem to be human needs, but they have created a different fate——Watches have been widely used after World War I until today; smart watches It wasn't until Apple entered the game that it began to stir the market and form a butterfly effect.  

On September 10, 2014, at Apple’s autumn conference, Cook released the Apple Watch for the first time, and Apple positioned it as sports health.  

Three months before Apple officially released the Apple Watch, the US technology website TechNewsWorld published a commentary article titled "Apple Will Tell Consumers Why They Need Smart Watches" In this article, the US consulting company Yankee Group Vice President Carl · Howe’s point of view is quoted as saying, “Currently, consumers do not want existing smart watches, resulting in poor sales of smart watches……, such new The domain (smart watch) must be defined before a demand arises. ”

Regardless of whether this view is a deliberate marketing by Apple, the result is: Apple Watch shipped 1,160 in just 9 months after its launch in 2015 In comparison, the total annual market shipments of smart watches in 2014 were less than 7 million.  

In the following few years, Apple Watch has been a long-term drive, even surpassing the traditional watch industry leader Rolex in 2017, becoming the world's highest-selling watch.

By 2019, the annual sales of Apple Watch will exceed the total shipments of all Swiss watch brands (31 million / 21 million). This shocked the entire watch industry.

However, what was the original intention of Apple for making the Apple Watch?

It was not until Apple’s chief design officer Jonathan Ive was interviewed by Hodinkee in 2018 that he answered this question in an official capacity for the first time:

The idea of ​​making a watch was that it started to be on the agenda a few months after Jobs’s death……, in my opinion, Apple has been turning technology into It is better to use and popularize to ordinary consumers.

Since the first watch was born, one of its most important applications is to track, communicate and encourage you to do three things: "Walk around ", "Exercise" and "Stand up for a while."

However, in Ive’s view, Apple Watch is not designed to solve specific problems, just as the initial development of smartphones was not just to solve communication problems.

Smart watch“copy”mobile phone

Recently, Counterpoint predicts in its latest statistics that global smartwatch shipments may exceed 100 million in 2020.

Assuming that a person wears only one smart watch, there will be more than 100 million people who have changed watches and new "watch friends" in 2020.

If you include the cumulative shipments of smart watches in the past five years, the Apple Watch, which only tops the list and occupies nearly 30% of the market share, was shipped last year Already nearly 100 million.

Perhaps Steve Jobs, who doesn’t wear a watch, would not have thought that smart watches would become Apple’s largest revenue source, even conquering the world in just a few years1 Billion users.  

So, how do you use smart watches that you buy?

For this reason, Leifeng.com has conducted a small-scale user survey specifically targeting representative groups of children, young people in the workplace, and middle-aged and elderly people (Note: the following users All names are pseudonyms):

Nina

6 years old student 2 years old

I am a first-year elementary school student, and now I have 2 years of age.

I first used smart watches because my mother was worried that I was playing with other children downstairs, and bought me a 360 children’s watch. Now I go downstairs and Other children will wear this watch when they play, and they can call their mother at any time, and mother can know my location at any time through the positioning function of the watch.  

Yin Zhe

24 years old media practitioner 3 years old 

I am a technology media practitioner, so I have been exposed to smart watches earlier, and now I have 3 years of age.

I’m currently using Apple Watch 3. Almost every day, I use a smart watch to check the time, read messages and reminders, record steps, make and receive calls, among which The phone is a feature I find more convenient for smart watches.

I prefer to wear smart watches, especially the message reminder and record function is very useful, especially in some occasions that are not suitable for watching mobile phones, some of the reminder functions of the watch And the recording function is more practical at this time.

In recent days, the charger of the watch was not found, and the watch was not worn for a few days, and occasionally missed calls.  

Hero Xiaoqiang

28 years old engineer 1.5 years old

I am a railway signal engineer. I actually used the smart bracelet first. At that time, I paid more attention to the payment function, so I bought a Lakala smart wristband.

Later, due to working overtime, staying up late, and the society from time to time exposed some negative news about young people’s health, I also paid more and more attention to my own Physical health, I hope I can measure blood pressure and heart rate at any time, and know my health at any time, so I started with a smart watch in 2019. At that time, I chose a brand that did a good job of making electronic blood pressure monitors—&mdash ; Omron's smart watch.

However, after using it for a while, I found that the heart rate and blood pressure detection of this watch is not accurate at all, and the detection data cannot be used as a reference. There is nothing outstanding. For these reasons, I have to recharge the battery frequently, and I haven’t used it since October last year.

I actually don’t have high requirements for watches. I can look at the time, and then it’s good to do the health data detection functions such as heart rate and blood pressure. As for now In fact, smart watches also have more functions than mobile phones, and I still feel very tasteless.

Return to the hometown

65-year-old retired employee 1 year old

I am a retired employee, and I have always had the habit of wearing watches when I was young. At that time, there were "old three pieces" (watches, bicycles, sewing machines) With such a statement, it was a very proud thing to have a good watch at the time.

Last year, the child brought back a Huami smart watch. After binding with the phone, it can monitor the number of steps and have a message reminder. The child helps me connect the watch to my phone It has been bound and set up the access control card function, and now I wear it every day. It is very convenient for caller ID display and community access control.

Although I need to charge the watch every night, I’m getting used to it now.

……

During the research process, Leifeng.com found that the two types of functions that many smart watch users often use are message reminders and caller ID as mobile phone auxiliary functions. In addition, As young people pay more and more attention to their own physical health, the sports health function, which is the main promotion of smart watch manufacturers, is slowly entering the daily lives of some users.

However, for young people who are not accustomed to wearing watches, smart watches still lack sufficient appeal.

This also makes Internet manufacturers continue to add more new features to this potential crowd when launching smart watch products. These features are often derived from smart phones“ Copy ” from.

Mobile phone manufacturers seek sideline business

Counterpoint, a market research agency, announced in the third quarter of 2020 global smartwatch research report in December 2020 that the top 8 brands in the market are:< /span>

Apple (28%), Huawei (15%), Samsung (10%), BBK Young Talent (7%), Fitbit (6%), Huami Amazfit (5%), Garmin (4%), Fossil (2%).

The shipments of smart watches from these 8 brands accounted for 77% of the global market share. Among them, only Apple’s smart watches accounted for $2.3 billion in sales revenue. This accounted for nearly half of the global smartwatch’s total revenue.

On the one hand, the head clustering effect of smart watches has begun to appear; on the other hand, more mobile phone manufacturers have begun to flood the track.

An obvious phenomenon is that when the time enters 2021, smart watches that have been questioned as tasteless have now become the sideline of all mainstream mobile phone manufacturers. .

On November 5, 2019, Xiaomi released its first smartwatch. Qu Heng, the general manager of the ecological chain of Xiaomi Group at the time, said:

Mi Smart Watch is a smart phone in the form of a watch that can be installed with applications and has a developer ecology.

On March 6, 2020, OPPO released its first smartwatch. Liu Bo, then President of OPPO’s Emerging Mobile Terminal Division, was interviewed by the media after the meeting Hour means:

For smart watches, we are more to seize new opportunities in the future, to bring users new features, and he can use it for a long time, and at the same time feel Valuable functions, such functions include exercise, health, independent communication.

On September 22, 2020, vivo’s first smart watch was officially launched. Zhu Huimin, product manager of vivo’s smart terminal, said at the press conference: p>

For lightweight terminals like watches, the real mission should not be to replace mobile phones, but to complement each other.  

So far, domestic mainstream mobile phone manufacturers have joined the watchmaking army, and smart watches have become an outright sideline for mobile phone manufacturers.

Do mobile phone manufacturers really lack a smart watch?

The fact is that they are not only fighting for a watch, but a closed loop in the next IoT ecosystem war. There is no smart watch. Ring, the impact will be the entire IoT ecological front.

This may be seen from the purchase motivation of a user who just purchased an Apple Watch when Leifeng.com was conducting user research this time:

I bought the Apple Watch to have the experience of “Apple Family Bucket”, for example, you can listen to music without turning on the (Apple) mobile phone, provided that you still Have a pair of AirPods.

When 100 million people wear a smart watch 

The real rigid demand is never completely designed by technology companies, but comes from the development of technology and the actual needs of human beings.

Take the watch as an example. Human’s need to keep track of the time conveniently at any time creates a rationality for the emergence of watches.