According to data released by Strategy Analytics, in the first quarter of 2021, global smartwatch shipments increased by 20% year-on-year to 13.7 million. Because of the different statistical calibers, the shipment data released by various research institutions are not the same, but the final analysis conclusions are quite consistent, that is, the pneumonia epidemic has increased consumer health awareness and promoted the continuous growth of smart watch market demand.
At the same time, some domestic mobile phone manufacturers are also waiting for opportunities to cut into this track. Recently, OPPO and vivo have released their first smart watches. Various signs indicate that the smart watch market is about to usher in an explosion. Can this product, once regarded as a "chicken rib", continue the current hot market?
When "fear of death" young people wear smart watches
In 2015, the first generation of Apple Watch became popular in China. To a large extent, the popularity of Apple Watch can be attributed to young people's pursuit of technology and fashion. For a long time, the additional functions of smart watches were limited to the recording and analysis of daily data, and smart watches that broke away from the necessary scenes of life quickly fell into an awkward situation.
With the continuous breakthrough of sensing technology, the functions of smart watches have become more and more comprehensive, and the health monitoring functions launched by Apple Watch have been followed up by major mobile phone manufacturers. Nowadays, a small smart watch has all functions such as fall monitoring, heart rate monitoring, breathing training, noise monitoring, and menstrual cycle recording. Some new products released this year are equipped with blood oxygen detection function.
And the sudden outbreak of the epidemic has made many smart watches thrown in the corners to be used.
"I now use smart watches mainly for sports management and health monitoring." Xiaoting, a young white-collar worker who works in Shenzhen Nanshan Science and Technology Park, said that she has been in the habit of wearing watches since she went to school. At the beginning of this year, she just graduated and spent more than two thousand yuan to buy a smart watch. Although she was hesitant to start, the health monitoring function in it still gave her an unexpected surprise.
"I saw a piece of news before that someone fell into a coma in the bathroom, and then called for rescue by the smart watch on his wrist, and the person was finally rescued." Xiaoting was a little afraid, she felt that if it wasn't for the fall reminder function on the smart watch , The person may be gone. After reading the news, she immediately turned on this feature on her smartwatch to prevent similar accidents from happening to her.
Another thing that surprised her was the ECG (electrocardiogram) function. It is understood that ECG is a medical monitoring index. In China, equipment equipped with this function needs to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the market. For this reason, the ECG function on Apple Watch has not yet been opened in mainland China.
However, after learning about this feature through Zhihu and other forums, Xiaoting can't wait to experience it. The last method she found was to successfully activate this function by registering to use an overseas Apple ID.
“Once I had a bad stomach after eating, the smart watch issued a message reminding me that my heart rate was abnormal, asking if I felt unwell and I needed to contact a doctor.” Xiaoting believes that many young people are aware of their physical health, this reminder It is very necessary.
After graduating from university last year, Xiaoting joined an Internet finance company in Shenzhen Nanshan Science and Technology Park. Her job was to operate fund insurance products. Like many young people, she occasionally stayed up late. Recently, she has also fallen into anxiety about hair loss.
"I think young people nowadays are very afraid of death," Xiaoting joked about the current phenomenon of many young people wearing smart watches. However, wearing smart watches really helped her develop a healthier lifestyle, "doing exercises. Some indicators will be set on smart watches at times, which will urge oneself to work hard to reach this sports standard."
This is the expected result. The global pneumonia epidemic has subtly changed people's health concepts, which directly boosted the market sales of smart watches.
IDC pointed out in the relevant market research report that the outbreak of the new crown epidemic has made more consumers more concerned about health and immunity issues. Regardless of the daily exercise habits, or the attention to one's own physical indicators, it will release more potential consumer demand. From the perspective of manufacturers, health wearable products are the blue ocean market for the next stage of competition.
"For a healthy future, put it on now." When the user opened the official website of Apple Watch, the slogan was placed in the most conspicuous position on the homepage.
Not only Apple, but an obvious trend at present is that domestic mobile phone manufacturers are promoting their own smart watches, and will also focus on sports health functions to cater to the current market's specific needs for smart watches.
Children hold up half the sky in the smart watch market
Strictly speaking, smart watches are not a new thing. At least at the beginning of this century, related concept products have appeared: Microsoft launched such a product in 2003. In addition, early companies including Google and Sony are also exploring such products.
"About ten years ago, there were smart watches sold in the (Huaqiangbei) market." Lao Cai, who has been working hard for nearly two decades in Huaqiangbei, told Huxi the hinterland of the Great Bay. However, the sales of smart watches were not good at that time. According to Lao Cai, "No one was specifically selling this at the time, because selling mobile phones made more money than this."
2013 is the budding year of smart watches. That year, many mainstream consumer electronics manufacturers, including Apple, Samsung, and Dell, were revealed to be developing smart watches, and the outside world also placed extremely high expectations on such products. At that time, a smart watch called Pebble even relied on crowdfunding from netizens to achieve mass production.
In the end, the industry must pass the test of the market, and Huaqiangbei is an excellent window to observe the market of electronic products. In Lao Cai's memory, in 2013, Huaqiangbei's smart watch market did not fluctuate too much.
The reason is undoubtedly that the product quality did not meet market expectations. The dismal sales of Samsung's smart watches reflected the situation at that time. In 2013, Samsung took the lead in launching its first Gear-type smartwatch, with sales of only 50,000 units that year. Industry analysis is mainly because this watch has obvious flaws: high price, ordinary functions, short battery life and so on.
Later, the enthusiasm of the smart watch market was completely ignited, or after Apple released the first Apple Watch. Lao Cai still remembers clearly, "At that time, after the Apple Watch came out, many mobile phone manufacturers followed suit and produced similar products, and then this market was caught on fire."
In April 2015, Apple's first Apple Watch went on sale, and the annual shipment of this series of products reached 9 million units. Data show that in 2015, global smart watch shipments increased by 16.2 million units, of which Apple alone accounted for more than half of the market share.
"Sell whatever electronic products are popular, and sell whatever makes money." This may be Huaqiangbei's most simple wealth code. It was in 2015 that Lao Cai started to put smart watches on the counter selling mobile phone accessories.
"At that time, there were many brands of (smart watches) coming out. The most popular one was Apple Watch. Basically everyone who came to buy a smart watch would ask the price of Apple Watch." Lao Cai described to Tiger Sniffing the hinterland of Dawan. However, the starting price of Apple's first-generation Apple Watch was 2,588 yuan, and the price of the highest configuration style exceeded 10,000 yuan. At that time, the price was still high for most people.
In fact, Lao Cai has only sold Apple Watch for more than a year. Later, whenever a manufacturer releases a new smartwatch, the market will cause a stir.
"Adult smart watches are mainly low-profit, and they are not available." Lao Cai said to Tiger Sniffing the hinterland of Dawan that smart watches produced by mobile phone manufacturers are mostly directly supplied online or in specialty stores. "We go to get the goods, the price is not much different from the official website price, and each retailer makes more than ten yuan, which is of little significance."
However, Lao Cai soon found another popular and lucrative product. In June 2015, Xiaotiancai, a children's smart product brand under BBK, launched a smart watch with "Chinese characteristics", specially designed for children, with the main call function. Because it accurately captures the specific needs of the Chinese market, this product Famous overnight.
According to data released by IDC, in 2019, Xiaotiancai's smartwatch shipments were 6.044 million units, a year-on-year increase of 17.65%. With the smart watch alone, BBK has a 6.1% market share in the Chinese wearable market, ranking fourth, followed by Xiaomi, Huawei and Apple.
Today, China's children's smartwatch market has attracted many players. In fact, in Huaqiangbei today, most of the smart watches sold on the market are children's smart watches. Among them, the brands such as Xiaotiancai, Tangmao, 360, and Huawei are the most common, and Lao Cai is the provincial agent of Tangmao. business.
Many Huaqiangbei merchants, including Lao Cai, have not personally felt the hotness of the adult smartwatch market this year, but they are very optimistic about the market prospects of children's smartwatches.
"In July and August this year, the children's smartwatch market ushered in an outbreak." Lao Cai said to Tiger Sniffing the hinterland of Dawan. "During the epidemic, many children were kept at home and were almost suffocated. After the release of the ban, parents were afraid of children's chaos. When running, many will choose to buy a smart watch to keep track of the child’s whereabouts at any time."
Lao Cai believes that the market for children's smart watches will always exist, with new children going to school every year, and new demands continue to flow. "If you go to any elementary school, 8 out of 10 kids wear smart watches."
To a certain extent, Huaqiangbei merchants are not blindly optimistic about the smart watch market. In 2016, the second-child policy was officially liberalized nationwide. In the next three years, the first batch of second-child children will enter the primary school campus, and the market dividend will be released soon.
"Real-time positioning, voice and video calls, and mobile payment are the three functions that parents are most concerned about." At the same time, Lao Cai also admitted that compared with adult smart watches, the technical barriers of children's smart watches are not high.
"At present, the largest market share is actually not small geniuses, but some miscellaneous brands. Many merchants outside will give this kind of watches at events. These watches cost only tens of yuan and 100 yuan, but they are not functionally compatible. There is not a big gap." Lao Cai said to Tiger Sniffing the hinterland of Dawan.
In fact, a large part of the Huaqiangbei children's smartwatch market was not branded before, but it has slowly disappeared in recent years, and merchants will be more cautious in purchasing.
“The brands of well-known manufacturers will have special personnel for back-office maintenance. Many small workshops that produce miscellaneous brands later ran away. As a result, the smart watch system is unavailable, and parents will come to us for trouble.” Lao Cai believes that children's smart watches The platform behind is the most important, and the future market will eventually belong to big brands.
How far is the IoT era of smart watches?
It’s worth noting that as more and more mobile phone manufacturers start to launch smart watches, the market has added a layer of interpretation that "the drunkard is not the wine": a smart watch is not just a watch, it has been given greater value by mobile phone manufacturers. The expectation is to serve as the entrance to the IoT (Internet of Things) era.
Based on the three characteristics of 5G technology: high bandwidth, low latency, and large connections. Real-time transmission of large scenes is possible, multi-terminal interconnection has a foundation, and a new era of Internet of Things is coming.
Smart home is the most basic application of the Internet of Things at the home level. It has broad prospects. Previously, Internet giants launched smart speakers for the purpose of grabbing the entry of the smart home market.
However, in the eyes of the industry, the dispute over the entry of smart homes is still unsolved. In fact, many smart hardwares have been expected to become the entrance to smart homes. For example, the router was first regarded as the entrance to the smart home, and the smart TV in the living room was also high hopes. Later, smart door locks and smart speakers appeared...
"As the entrance to the smart home IoT, these products have limitations. For example, the penetration rate of smart speakers is low, and most of them do not have a display function; although the watch is worn anytime and anywhere, the screen is too small and the display advantage is not obvious; The advantage of the TV is that the screen is large and the information displayed is very suitable, but it is not mobile and cannot capture the information instructions issued by the owner anytime and anywhere." said Liu Buchen, an expert in the home appliance industry.
Behind the entry dispute, it reflects the real dilemma that smart homes do not have industry standards. In the absence of a unified industry standard, different fields and different companies are fighting each other and forming systems, and smart home products are diverse. It is difficult to achieve system compatibility, information sharing, and interconnection. The IoT era belonging to smart watches is ultimately one Unattainable dreams.
In the final analysis, the core driving force of the current smartwatch market is still the most practical and pure needs of users. It seems unrealistic to give too much expectations to smart watches on the IoT portal.
For mobile phone manufacturers, the current launch of smart watches is also based on the most realistic revenue demand. "The smartphone market has reached a growth bottleneck, and the large-scale replacement wave in the 5G era will not come in a short period of time." Sun Yanbiao, an expert in the mobile phone industry, said that compared to smartphones, it is similar to wireless earphones and smart watches. Of wearable hardware has higher profit margins. Today, the total shipments of smartwatches from Apple, Samsung, and Huawei have exceeded 10 million units, but there is a stock market of more than one billion smart phones, and there is huge room for incremental growth.