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Opinion: Samsung stops making smart watches

Shaun McGill’s Lost In Mobile is one of my favourite technology blogs. A true blog in a very saturated market, his opinions often express the logical voice, despite his love for Apple. Anyway, jokes apart, he has a great passion for watches, so after Samsung announced they won’t be making smart watches any more, I emailed him. See my email and response below.

Based on recent sales, or lack off, Samsung have announced that they won’t be making any more smart watches for a while.
 
As somebody who is keen about watches, smart and otherwise , what are your thoughts?

 

A good question from Sami and one which can be addressed with multiple answers, but my main guess is one that many would not have thought about.

 

For starters, Android Wear is not a great platform to build products upon at this time. It is a square OS and most manufacturers are building round watches which leads to some compromises and disjointedness in the interface. This also leads to larger than average watches due to the need to included bigger batteries and so we end up with plastic devices that do not feel like real watches.

 

And then there is the smart watch experience, one which leads the user to continually look at their wrist if they receive lots of notifications and one which continually forces you back to the phone it is linked to. There are moments when the features are genuinely useful because they can stop you from missing calls and important emails, but sadly none of them are useful enough to make the compromises worthwhile. Daily battery charging and a watch on your wrist which feels more tech than elegant will not do for the majority.

 

Indeed, I do not know one person who would benefit from the smart watch experience and feel that it is destined to fail in its current form, and that includes the Apple Watch. For many, a watch is a device that needs to do one thing well which is obviously to tell the time. For others like me, a watch means many things. It highlights strong design, incredible workmanship and technical advancement which is way ahead of what the best smart watches can offer. A decent mechanical watch includes hundreds of parts working seamlessly together and many of these are hand finished. They require servicing, just like a car, and provide enjoyment and comfort every time the owner looks at them.

 

Even cheaper watches offer an emotional experience which smart watches cannot come close to. For example, my latest is a Bulova 96B128 which can now be bought for less then £100. The second hand sweeps, the precisionist movements is accurate to seconds per year and the glass is styled in the most unusual of ways. Add a subtly detailed brown face which looks black indoors and you can see the care and attention which has been put in to it every time you check the time. It is elegant, emotional and considered in ways that make the Apple Watch, and especially the Edition version, appear to be frauds.

 

bulova

 

Samsung, like LG and others, has struggled to sell smart watches in big numbers and the reasons for taking a break are potentially numerous. Low sales will be a factor, the Android Wear platform is another, but ultimately I believe that capability is behind the decision. Samsung is not able to make a smart watch which appeals to the majority of potential purchasers and that is not a fault of the company, but just maybe the realisation that it cannot make a smart watch which competes with the Apple Watch is the main factor. In the mobile market, no matter what the product is, Samsung needs to be able to compete with Apple because it has already achieved a great deal of success. In the case of watches, however, I don’t believe Samsung can do that and I remain convinced that it is a market not worth investing resources and money in anyway.

 

(Shaun McGill – lostinmobile.com)

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