Let’s start with the obvious, the Apple Watch is beautiful, for a v1 device. It’s sleek, stylish, as much fashion accessory as it is functional. But as beautiful as it is, it’s still a first generation device, kind of like the original iPod, and that’s ok.
We are just at the start of the wearables evolution and its only going to get better. And not just for Apple fans, but for everyone; Pebble, Samsung, Motorola, and yes, even Microsoft, will push each other as this market drives forward, and that’s good for all of us.
After using the Microsoft Band for four months, watching how quickly the wearable space is evolving, and thinking about where this segment may be headed, a few themes are starting to evolve, let’s take a look:
Glance-ability Remains the Killer App:
Ok, it’s really the killer feature, but it will deliver the broadest value. The wearable apps space is just entering the early-days, wild-west phase and I expect a lot of things will be thrown at the wall to see what really proves useful on our wrists, but one thing is clear to me, the ability to quickly glance at pertinent information, without having to grab your phone from your pocket or purse, is the universally killer feature of wearables. While the Band allows me to reply to texts and emails either via voice, or tiny soft keyboard (which has amazingly accurate predictive typing) it’s the ability to quickly see what notification just came in, and allowing me to ignore the lower priority ones and keep focused on my current task at hand, that has the most value.
This isn’t to say that the various apps and services that become available won’t have value. The ability to pay for things without having to reach for your purse/wallet/phone, as I can do today at Starbucks, or hailing an Uber, or opening my hotel room door, will all be super useful, for very specific times and usages. What will have perennial value and usefulness will be the glance-and-ignore value of minimizing interruptions.
All Devices Need Tilt/Flip to Wake:
Give Android Wear credit for being first with this simple feature but the current lack of tilt/flip to wake up the Band is a minor annoyance. I expect this to be remedied in an upcoming update but this kind of motion aware behavior should be universal, and tailored to the state/mode you are in.
Sitting/stationary? wake and show the current time, walking/running? wake and show distance, elapsed time, walking into a Starbucks? wake and show my Starbucks Card app.
Which brings us to…
We Need Location and Behavior Triggered Apps:
And by this I don’t mean location aware apps, example: I launch Uber and it knows where I am and shares this info with the app/service. I mean apps that based on where, when and what I’m doing, and what I’ve done before, knows to launch or surface itself to the top level view.
A simple example is paying for coffee at Starbucks from my Starbucks account: my wearable knows where I am, it knows the speed I’m moving and it (should) know my past behavior so when I walk into my usual Starbucks, or any Starbucks, as opposed to say driving by it, the Starbucks app should automatically be surfaced on the device, ready for me to pay.
And remember, this is only one example, so let’s not go down the “well, you should just use Apple Pay” road. Starbucks and other merchants get a lot of value from us parking little bundles of $$ in their various pre-paid accounts and they will continue to offer reward and loyalty perks for us to do this instead of using a generic payment method.
There are multiple scenarios for this: I walk into the gym I belong to, surface the work-out app, I walk out my front door for my usual 5:30 am run, surface the run-tracking app, (Ok, for me the last one is a bit of a stretch of believability but you get the point). More so than phones, wearables should be really, really personal, and minimize the tapping, typing and navigation I’m required to do to use it.
People will Have Multiple Wearables, the Key will be Apps and the Cloud:
And I include in this not only multiple types of wearables; watch/wrist things, glasses/goggles things, headphone/earphone things, etc, but also multiple versions/models of wearables in the same category, most notably wrist/watch wearable’s.
While the Apple Watch takes one approach to this in it’s first release: a watch body that can be placed in various bands/holders depending on what you want to do, the fact remains there are certain situations where I might want a more rugged and durable “sports band” and other times I might want a more fashionable “watch” but I want to be able to get to most of, if not all the same services, or at least collect and share data across multiple wearables and devices, and this is enabled via the cloud services I will use.
Just like many people have more than one model of the iPod across nano, shuffle and touch; as the cost, size and battery life improves on wearable devices many people will most likely have at least two wrist-worn devices. Similarly, back in the dark ages long ago when people actually wore watches, it was typical that people had two to three watches spanning from sports, to casual, to dress that matched the mode they were in.
People will Want to Mix and Match:
Increasingly apps and services are going cross-platform meaning you are no longer locked into one vendor for your technology. This is certainly true in apps, and it’s becoming increasingly true for hardware, and I believe it will be acutely true for wearables. We’re already seeing this in things like Android Wear, and the Microsoft Band, where the wearable device can work with multiple smartphone platforms, and allows you to buy the best mix of features, cost and style that makes sense to you.
If say Under Armor makes the best fitness-focused band, Apple makes the best fashion focused watch, Microsoft makes the best lens focused headware and Samsung makes the best smartphone, why shouldn’t I want to pick and choose across each of these in a way that makes sense for me?
However these unfold it’s clear that wearables will be a significant consumer category and one that spans both function and fashion. Some cool stuff is going on, and it’s only going to get better.
clarkb... 