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Google Rumored To Be Making A Smartwatch, Too

25 points by AndreasLuckey 14y ago

xmpir 14y ago
if one has google glasses i don't really see a use case for the watch...
- Shooti 14y ago
  Remote trackpad for Glass? Seems that would be more convenient/accessible than using a trackpad on the side of your head.
- AndreasLuckey 14y ago
  not necessarily... I wouldn't want to wear those glasses...Especially those people who are not even short-sighted! I imagine that to be very uncomfortable!
- wklauss 14y ago
  Like you say: IF Google glasses seems to me like an ill fitted concept. It's expensive and you need to wear it constantly. A watch is more discreet and doesn't create that feeling of "I'm being filmed by that person" on those around you. I'm not sure the watch is a great device for everyone but I think it's a more realistic wearable companion for the phone than Google glasses. Don't take me wrong. I think technically Google glasses are an interesting engineering endeavor. It's just that I see limited appeal to them. A watch seems like a good logical step from the Nike Fuelband concept. Track my activity, sense what I'm doing and also display my texts or emails and incoming calls, maybe small maps or very targeted info.
checker659 14y ago
Here we go. 3DTV all over again.
- IanDrake 14y ago
  Hundreds of people will want these! Hundreds.
- Leynos 14y ago
  3D TV has become a non-issue because it essentially comes for free. All you need is a 120hz display and a transmitter for active glasses. More or less every TV selling for more than £500 includes 3D.
MatthewPhillips 14y ago
I'll go ahead and predict that smart watches flop. Hard. I think people want some new thing after tablets are becoming normal, and we thought that was going to be TV, but the content industry has built really good moats around TV so no one can shake it up. So in the urgency to create a new market, smart watches are easy, are direct-to-consumer, have been done in the past and only need polish. That doesn't mean anyone will want one once the "shiny new thing" feeling wears off.
- roc 14y ago
  > "have been done in the past and only need polish." That's the truly hilarious part. If someone delivers a smartwatch that might work, it'll be derided as being "lesser" than the preceding products. [1] If they deliver something that throws the kitchen sink at the watch form-factor, it will be derided because people have been doing that (unsuccessfully) for years now. If you ask me, the killer approach for a 'smartwatch' is fuelband/fitbit-style passive data collection [2] paired with proximity based two-factor authentication for smartphones and computers. [3] You can throw in notifications with swipe-to-dismiss. [4] But much more than that is just never going to work well enough to be worthwhile. [5] The very idea of prolonged interaction with a watch is silly. It's going to be too fiddly to be faster than just pulling your phone out. So why would anyone even bother? But the tech press would trash such a device. [1] polish will almost certainly include stripping away functionality that's currently present on watch-phones, just as tablets had to shed desktop OSes. [2] just go hog-wild with sensors. the biggest value-add will be in providing more/better data to apps and services accessed on other devices. [3] e.g. you step up to your PC in the morning, it asks your password. For the rest of the day, when you walk away it auto-locks and when you come back, it unlocks. Similarly your phone only asks for an unlock code once every 4 or 8 hours and in between treats the presence of the watch as a sufficient token. [4] Also: "swipe to open this on my phone". So one doesn't see a notification on their watch, see something that deserves attention and then have to re-navigate to that notification or app to act upon it. [5] And, no, no-one wants to talk on a watch-phone like Dick Tracy. And bluetooth headsets & earPod-style headphone/mic combos already have buttons you can press to answer calls without grabbing your phone.
jfb 14y ago
I'm deeply skeptical of the whole Apple iWatch thing.
- joezydeco 14y ago
  I would LOVE to find out this whole iWatch thing is a huge fakeout from Apple to get the competition distracted.
  - jfb 14y ago
    It just reeks of stupid to me.
  - wklauss 14y ago
    It would be even funnier if competitions tart working on it and suddenly create a market for the device, even if it's small.
    - joezydeco 14y ago
      Well there's no doubt that people want some kind of wearable extension of their phones. The Pebble kickstarter showed that.
      - jfb 14y ago
        Which is all well and good; there's a market for hideous stuffed animals with human teeth [1], but that's not an argument for Apple (or Samsung, or Google) to get into it. Basically, it seems really out of character for Apple to do this sort of thing. To be honest, I would expect a Google Glass sort of ubiquitous computer before a "smartwatch"; at least the former has the potential to turn into another pillar for Apple. [1] http://www.etsy.com/shop/cathairandteeth http://www.etsy.com/shop/cathairandteeth -- I have one and it's awesome
        joezydeco 14y ago
        Yes, that was the second sentence I forgot to type. There's some need, but probably not one that Apple deems large enough to necessitate a new product category.
arocks 14y ago
Since smart phones became ubiquitous, most of my friends have stopped wearing watches. The phone already tells you the time. So I find the trend of every smart phone manufacturer trying to built a smart watch as extremely ironical.
bertomartin 14y ago
Interesting how the 'competition' isn't in smart glasses ala google glasses. Guess there's not much competition when real innovation is involved.
- tomrod 14y ago
  While I've heard much about them, I have yet to try out Google glasses. So the innovation is still on the horizon from my perspective.
bertomartin 14y ago
Was there any official statement from Apple that they're working on a smart watch? I don't know, but I just think this is a head-fake from them...Like a few other posters, I just don't see the big deal about a 'smart' watch. I want a simple watch.
iTrollFreely 14y ago
though i'd love to wear a smartwatch, my primary concern is battery life. having to plug it into a charger every other night would be a huge dealbreaker. it would have to use sort of inductive charging (still not optimal since you need a mat everywhere you go). Mechanical watches for decades have used hand winding, kinetic self winding, solar recharging technologies, but would these be sufficient to charge a full -on electronic device? doubtful. once they solve the battery issue, the idea will be a HUUUGE cash cow.
- swah 14y ago
  I'd love it even if only for notifications. What about e-ink?
- unavoidable 14y ago
  Once you get used to charging it, it's no longer a problem. People were annoyed when smartphones came out and they had to charge them every night instead of once a week or so.
mtct 14y ago
Smartwatches were cool...in the eighties. Now, not so much, they are too flashy.
- swah 14y ago
  Flashy? The trend for bigger and bigger watches is going strong for a few years now. (Nixon is one brand that has those, IIRC... young people seem to love them).
hfsktr 14y ago
I agree with most of the people that commented already. I have though about getting a watch (novelty/binary). Then I realize that my phone is always on me and the time is right there. The only watches I've seen appear to be to signal status. Smart phones do that just as well too. There are probably special occasions that a watch would be better than a phone but I can't even think of any decent ones. Best I can do is comment that watches are touching you and could include that feedback from your body...heart rate, bp etc. Pretty narrow use case if you ask me though.
- jfb 14y ago
  And really, does a $99 Apple/Samsung/Google &c. watch act as a social signal? I don't think so.
  - hfsktr 14y ago
    Maybe not to you or me but we might not be the right audience. A phone doesn't signal much to me (or lots of people I'm sure) but there is no shortage of people letting you know what kind of phone they have now. There are many things that cost less than $99 that act as social signals (there are brands for just about everything). As someone said above about tablets seeming useless. Maybe there will be a use that nobody is thinking of and it will explode.
- daliusd 14y ago
  Well, watch has another little feature: it is almost always on your hand. Now combine that with motion sensors and you have xbox like controller for anything you want, e.g. tablet, TV or computer. Swipe to see next page, next channel, scroll hacker news down. Actually nothing new but better than stupid wrist for motion detection because watch as you said signals status. Apple devices signals status, Apple's watch wouldn't do less. Questions is if technology is small enough to implement that. Anyway, let's wait and see what market will offer. I remember talking with my coworker about tablets (iPad) 2 years ago wondering what useful they could be for (just checked wikipedia to see that iPad is not even 3 years old). Now tablets are almost commodity.
- nmcfarl 14y ago
chewxy 14y ago
No one's going to mention that Microsoft again had been there and done it? (see: SPOT watch) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Personal_Objects_Technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Personal_Objects_Technolo...
noonespecial 14y ago
Unfortunately for the smartwatch folks, a friend of mine in fashion, (who seems to get this stuff right with uncanny frequency) tells me that the "watch the size of a dinner plate" thing is starting to play out. The new new in watches is going to be understated and ultra-thin. They may have missed their golden moment when having something enormous and bling-y on you wrist wasn't dorky.
jws 14y ago
The name "Watch" misleads. No one¹ needs a dedicated device to tell time anymore. What may work in the market is one more tier of information interface. cloud > desktop > tablet > phone > ???. I keep my phone in a front trouser pocket. I find that the overwhelming majority of the "dig out the phone"² events during the day are to observe a bit of recently arrived information, or, less frequently, to issue a temporally context sensitive command. Both of these actions would be easily handled by a tiny display with enough room for a few touch zones and limited gesture recognition.³ It doesn't need to be strapped to my wrist. I might prefer it clipped to my sleeve or in a shirt pocket. (return of the fob to keep it from escaping?) It won't work for everyone. It will be useless to people who spend the day with uncorrected farsighted vision. They might as well pull out their phones as their eye glasses. It only needs enough energy to get through the day, I'll put it in a charger at night. Make it cheap enough and sell it in a two pack and I'll just swap them in the morning. Do the software right with proximity detection, and I'll have a virtual one on my desktop screen, and a slightly larger one stuck to my car dashboard (solar charger to avoid cable). ␄ ¹ except nurses, and… ² I also find that my "drop the phone" events are almost all precipitated by a "dig out the phone". Eliminate the dig, avoid the drop. Women who use purses appear to have similar issues. ³ I'd also like to give it voice commands rather than navigating a complex UI, but that is just feeding a mic to the phone or tablet. And if I could hold it to my ear and let it tell me something that would also be great, but don't make it too big to cram in that feature. Still, we are talking a <$100 device here. Bluetooth 4.0 covers all the communications, tiny touch display, speaker, mic, accelerometer.
- xoail 14y ago
  Also slap in a pedometer and sleep monitor and that itself creates a whole new market opportunity. I cant wait for these watches.
  - maxerickson 14y ago
    Motorola basically already shipped one in 2011: https://motoactv.com/ https://motoactv.com/ http://www.motorola.com/us/consumers/8GB-or-16GB-MOTOACTV/79070,en_US,pd.html http://www.motorola.com/us/consumers/8GB-or-16GB-MOTOACTV/79... Given the bulk of it, the positioning as a fitness device makes sense.
ignostic 14y ago
> Google Glass takes wearable computing a step beyond the basic wrist watch. However, the rate of adoption will almost certainly be lower... Nonsense. Everyone I've talked to about Glass has suggested a new use that I haven't thought of yet, and I've only met one person who wasn't excited about the project. Everyone I've talked to about smartwatches, on the other hand, doesn't understand. "Why? What can it do that my phone can't?" "But I already have a clock on my phone." This sentiment is mirrored in the tech media. This might be anecdotal at this point, but I'm predicting a flop for watches and a lot of wasted time and money. But then, maybe I'm wrong like I was wrong about tablets before the iPad started selling.
- unavoidable 14y ago
  Smart watches can succeed because they have different use cases than phones. Do people look at their phones because there is a clock on it, or for some other reason? I am using a Pebble now and since I have gotten it I no longer look at my phone on a regular basis. In fact I often lose track of my phone because I so rarely take it out.
- Newky 14y ago
  Although in theory I agree with your idea, the relevant price points of the two products would probably be an important factor in their popularity. Even if the glass was to be reduced to a $1000 product, I still feel that a lot of people would find that sort of luxury product a little over their price point. We know so little about the watch (down to its very existence) however you would expect the price point to be similar to other smart watches which are in and around $100. If this was the case, the smaller amount of uses of a $100 device out trumps the virtues of a $1000 device for the vast majority of budget users.
- 1337biz 14y ago
  Absolutely! It is a lot easier to introduce a new, innovative product that everyone can visually and conceptually understand as something new. But trying to reinvent a (more or less dead) market is a lot more difficult. I could see the chances as slightly better for Apple, as they are already in the high priced segment on the verge to a lifestyle/design product. This should connect better to the existing (male) watch market which looks to the outside as having become completely a luxury/accessories market.

25 points by AndreasLuckey 14y ago

xmpir 14y ago

if one has google glasses i don't really see a use case for the watch...

Shooti 14y ago
Remote trackpad for Glass? Seems that would be more convenient/accessible than using a trackpad on the side of your head.
AndreasLuckey 14y ago
not necessarily... I wouldn't want to wear those glasses...Especially those people who are not even short-sighted! I imagine that to be very uncomfortable!
wklauss 14y ago
Like you say: IF Google glasses seems to me like an ill fitted concept. It's expensive and you need to wear it constantly. A watch is more discreet and doesn't create that feeling of "I'm being filmed by that person" on those around you. I'm not sure the watch is a great device for everyone but I think it's a more realistic wearable companion for the phone than Google glasses. Don't take me wrong. I think technically Google glasses are an interesting engineering endeavor. It's just that I see limited appeal to them. A watch seems like a good logical step from the Nike Fuelband concept. Track my activity, sense what I'm doing and also display my texts or emails and incoming calls, maybe small maps or very targeted info.

checker659 14y ago

Here we go. 3DTV all over again.

IanDrake 14y ago
Hundreds of people will want these! Hundreds.
Leynos 14y ago
3D TV has become a non-issue because it essentially comes for free. All you need is a 120hz display and a transmitter for active glasses. More or less every TV selling for more than £500 includes 3D.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago

I'll go ahead and predict that smart watches flop. Hard. I think people want some new thing after tablets are becoming normal, and we thought that was going to be TV, but the content industry has built really good moats around TV so no one can shake it up. So in the urgency to create a new market, smart watches are easy, are direct-to-consumer, have been done in the past and only need polish. That doesn't mean anyone will want one once the "shiny new thing" feeling wears off.

roc 14y ago
> "have been done in the past and only need polish." That's the truly hilarious part. If someone delivers a smartwatch that might work, it'll be derided as being "lesser" than the preceding products. [1] If they deliver something that throws the kitchen sink at the watch form-factor, it will be derided because people have been doing that (unsuccessfully) for years now. If you ask me, the killer approach for a 'smartwatch' is fuelband/fitbit-style passive data collection [2] paired with proximity based two-factor authentication for smartphones and computers. [3] You can throw in notifications with swipe-to-dismiss. [4] But much more than that is just never going to work well enough to be worthwhile. [5] The very idea of prolonged interaction with a watch is silly. It's going to be too fiddly to be faster than just pulling your phone out. So why would anyone even bother? But the tech press would trash such a device. [1] polish will almost certainly include stripping away functionality that's currently present on watch-phones, just as tablets had to shed desktop OSes. [2] just go hog-wild with sensors. the biggest value-add will be in providing more/better data to apps and services accessed on other devices. [3] e.g. you step up to your PC in the morning, it asks your password. For the rest of the day, when you walk away it auto-locks and when you come back, it unlocks. Similarly your phone only asks for an unlock code once every 4 or 8 hours and in between treats the presence of the watch as a sufficient token. [4] Also: "swipe to open this on my phone". So one doesn't see a notification on their watch, see something that deserves attention and then have to re-navigate to that notification or app to act upon it. [5] And, no, no-one wants to talk on a watch-phone like Dick Tracy. And bluetooth headsets & earPod-style headphone/mic combos already have buttons you can press to answer calls without grabbing your phone.

jfb 14y ago

I'm deeply skeptical of the whole Apple iWatch thing.

joezydeco 14y ago
I would LOVE to find out this whole iWatch thing is a huge fakeout from Apple to get the competition distracted.
- jfb 14y ago
  It just reeks of stupid to me.
- wklauss 14y ago
  It would be even funnier if competitions tart working on it and suddenly create a market for the device, even if it's small.
  - joezydeco 14y ago
    Well there's no doubt that people want some kind of wearable extension of their phones. The Pebble kickstarter showed that.
    - jfb 14y ago
      Which is all well and good; there's a market for hideous stuffed animals with human teeth [1], but that's not an argument for Apple (or Samsung, or Google) to get into it. Basically, it seems really out of character for Apple to do this sort of thing. To be honest, I would expect a Google Glass sort of ubiquitous computer before a "smartwatch"; at least the former has the potential to turn into another pillar for Apple. [1] http://www.etsy.com/shop/cathairandteeth http://www.etsy.com/shop/cathairandteeth -- I have one and it's awesome
      - joezydeco 14y ago
        Yes, that was the second sentence I forgot to type. There's some need, but probably not one that Apple deems large enough to necessitate a new product category.

arocks 14y ago

Since smart phones became ubiquitous, most of my friends have stopped wearing watches. The phone already tells you the time. So I find the trend of every smart phone manufacturer trying to built a smart watch as extremely ironical.

bertomartin 14y ago

Interesting how the 'competition' isn't in smart glasses ala google glasses. Guess there's not much competition when real innovation is involved.

tomrod 14y ago
While I've heard much about them, I have yet to try out Google glasses. So the innovation is still on the horizon from my perspective.

bertomartin 14y ago

Was there any official statement from Apple that they're working on a smart watch? I don't know, but I just think this is a head-fake from them...Like a few other posters, I just don't see the big deal about a 'smart' watch. I want a simple watch.

iTrollFreely 14y ago

though i'd love to wear a smartwatch, my primary concern is battery life. having to plug it into a charger every other night would be a huge dealbreaker. it would have to use sort of inductive charging (still not optimal since you need a mat everywhere you go). Mechanical watches for decades have used hand winding, kinetic self winding, solar recharging technologies, but would these be sufficient to charge a full -on electronic device? doubtful. once they solve the battery issue, the idea will be a HUUUGE cash cow.

swah 14y ago
I'd love it even if only for notifications. What about e-ink?
unavoidable 14y ago
Once you get used to charging it, it's no longer a problem. People were annoyed when smartphones came out and they had to charge them every night instead of once a week or so.

mtct 14y ago

Smartwatches were cool...in the eighties. Now, not so much, they are too flashy.

swah 14y ago
Flashy? The trend for bigger and bigger watches is going strong for a few years now. (Nixon is one brand that has those, IIRC... young people seem to love them).

hfsktr 14y ago

I agree with most of the people that commented already. I have though about getting a watch (novelty/binary). Then I realize that my phone is always on me and the time is right there. The only watches I've seen appear to be to signal status. Smart phones do that just as well too. There are probably special occasions that a watch would be better than a phone but I can't even think of any decent ones. Best I can do is comment that watches are touching you and could include that feedback from your body...heart rate, bp etc. Pretty narrow use case if you ask me though.

jfb 14y ago
And really, does a $99 Apple/Samsung/Google &c. watch act as a social signal? I don't think so.
- hfsktr 14y ago
  Maybe not to you or me but we might not be the right audience. A phone doesn't signal much to me (or lots of people I'm sure) but there is no shortage of people letting you know what kind of phone they have now. There are many things that cost less than $99 that act as social signals (there are brands for just about everything). As someone said above about tablets seeming useless. Maybe there will be a use that nobody is thinking of and it will explode.
daliusd 14y ago
Well, watch has another little feature: it is almost always on your hand. Now combine that with motion sensors and you have xbox like controller for anything you want, e.g. tablet, TV or computer. Swipe to see next page, next channel, scroll hacker news down. Actually nothing new but better than stupid wrist for motion detection because watch as you said signals status. Apple devices signals status, Apple's watch wouldn't do less. Questions is if technology is small enough to implement that. Anyway, let's wait and see what market will offer. I remember talking with my coworker about tablets (iPad) 2 years ago wondering what useful they could be for (just checked wikipedia to see that iPad is not even 3 years old). Now tablets are almost commodity.
nmcfarl 14y ago

chewxy 14y ago

No one's going to mention that Microsoft again had been there and done it? (see: SPOT watch) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Personal_Objects_Technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Personal_Objects_Technolo...

noonespecial 14y ago

Unfortunately for the smartwatch folks, a friend of mine in fashion, (who seems to get this stuff right with uncanny frequency) tells me that the "watch the size of a dinner plate" thing is starting to play out. The new new in watches is going to be understated and ultra-thin. They may have missed their golden moment when having something enormous and bling-y on you wrist wasn't dorky.

jws 14y ago

The name "Watch" misleads. No one¹ needs a dedicated device to tell time anymore. What may work in the market is one more tier of information interface. cloud > desktop > tablet > phone > ???. I keep my phone in a front trouser pocket. I find that the overwhelming majority of the "dig out the phone"² events during the day are to observe a bit of recently arrived information, or, less frequently, to issue a temporally context sensitive command. Both of these actions would be easily handled by a tiny display with enough room for a few touch zones and limited gesture recognition.³ It doesn't need to be strapped to my wrist. I might prefer it clipped to my sleeve or in a shirt pocket. (return of the fob to keep it from escaping?) It won't work for everyone. It will be useless to people who spend the day with uncorrected farsighted vision. They might as well pull out their phones as their eye glasses. It only needs enough energy to get through the day, I'll put it in a charger at night. Make it cheap enough and sell it in a two pack and I'll just swap them in the morning. Do the software right with proximity detection, and I'll have a virtual one on my desktop screen, and a slightly larger one stuck to my car dashboard (solar charger to avoid cable). ␄ ¹ except nurses, and… ² I also find that my "drop the phone" events are almost all precipitated by a "dig out the phone". Eliminate the dig, avoid the drop. Women who use purses appear to have similar issues. ³ I'd also like to give it voice commands rather than navigating a complex UI, but that is just feeding a mic to the phone or tablet. And if I could hold it to my ear and let it tell me something that would also be great, but don't make it too big to cram in that feature. Still, we are talking a <$100 device here. Bluetooth 4.0 covers all the communications, tiny touch display, speaker, mic, accelerometer.

xoail 14y ago
Also slap in a pedometer and sleep monitor and that itself creates a whole new market opportunity. I cant wait for these watches.
- maxerickson 14y ago
  Motorola basically already shipped one in 2011: https://motoactv.com/ https://motoactv.com/ http://www.motorola.com/us/consumers/8GB-or-16GB-MOTOACTV/79070,en_US,pd.html http://www.motorola.com/us/consumers/8GB-or-16GB-MOTOACTV/79... Given the bulk of it, the positioning as a fitness device makes sense.

ignostic 14y ago

> Google Glass takes wearable computing a step beyond the basic wrist watch. However, the rate of adoption will almost certainly be lower... Nonsense. Everyone I've talked to about Glass has suggested a new use that I haven't thought of yet, and I've only met one person who wasn't excited about the project. Everyone I've talked to about smartwatches, on the other hand, doesn't understand. "Why? What can it do that my phone can't?" "But I already have a clock on my phone." This sentiment is mirrored in the tech media. This might be anecdotal at this point, but I'm predicting a flop for watches and a lot of wasted time and money. But then, maybe I'm wrong like I was wrong about tablets before the iPad started selling.

unavoidable 14y ago
Smart watches can succeed because they have different use cases than phones. Do people look at their phones because there is a clock on it, or for some other reason? I am using a Pebble now and since I have gotten it I no longer look at my phone on a regular basis. In fact I often lose track of my phone because I so rarely take it out.
Newky 14y ago
Although in theory I agree with your idea, the relevant price points of the two products would probably be an important factor in their popularity. Even if the glass was to be reduced to a $1000 product, I still feel that a lot of people would find that sort of luxury product a little over their price point. We know so little about the watch (down to its very existence) however you would expect the price point to be similar to other smart watches which are in and around $100. If this was the case, the smaller amount of uses of a $100 device out trumps the virtues of a $1000 device for the vast majority of budget users.
1337biz 14y ago
Absolutely! It is a lot easier to introduce a new, innovative product that everyone can visually and conceptually understand as something new. But trying to reinvent a (more or less dead) market is a lot more difficult. I could see the chances as slightly better for Apple, as they are already in the high priced segment on the verge to a lifestyle/design product. This should connect better to the existing (male) watch market which looks to the outside as having become completely a luxury/accessories market.