Smart watches are coming back. Are consumers ready?

I used to own Microsoft Smart Watch in mid 2000s. It was a great product for its time – synced my calendar, received notes, displayed weather forecast, stocks, etc. I had to charge it every other day if I wanted it to stay online. Offline watch could operate for a couple of weeks. Microsoft Smart Watches never took off and was shut down in 2008. I stopped using the watch as my phone became much ‘smarter’ and replaced it.

Today market analysts think growth is in smart watches and are coining new term: ‘wearables’. Samsung is starting to sell their Galaxy Gear series. Apple is working on a watch. Even Nissan has their Smart Watch. Either they see huge growth in the segment or cars are not selling well. BI Intelligence thinks this is next multi-billion dollar market. Their projection is based on smartphone and tablet penetration reaching 3.7 billion and 4-5% attach rate resulting in 300M unit sales and 5 years from today. Juniper forecasts 36M sales for the same year.

They all could be wrong. Let’s look at value smart watches add: service beyond displaying time and date, connectivity and information. Smart phones do those tasks much better and I can’t see consumers parting with phones any time soon. No all consumers will buy both watch and phone. Phone with its functionality replaces watch and not the way around.

I think that Smart Watch market growth will be limited and not reach majority at least any time soon.