Update on smartwatches supply in Business Insider!

Business Insider website just produced today a very cool study of all smart watches available. Some of these devices can not be considered "smart" but they are "connected", but the overview is interesting.
No surprise that Pebble is number 1.

http://smartwatches.findthebest.com/

The next mobile revolution: the Smartwatch!

People have given up their watches in the recent years because cellphones were providing more information and especially the time. Wearing a watch became "not cool" or useless.
Now, you have Google, Apple and Microsoft all mentioning work on smart watches project!

So, what are the underlying social and/or economical trends pushing the industry to go into that direction?

• Creation of new "smart" high value product category, now that the smartphone market is almost saturated (Samsung "only" sold 22M units of their latest Galaxy instead of the 30m units expected during the first quarter of CY2013).
• Smart watch would allow the tech industry to leverage or compete with the fashion and design industry, opening new business opportunities and channels. This is the "Wear Tech" trend.
• Such device will meet the needs of the "Quantified Self" generation, asking for sensors to monitor their health.
• Addressable market would be even larger, if we consider that you might not need a SIM card to use it, leveraging Wi-Fi?

What features should we expect from such devices?

• All the regular phone functions, voice/text- likely paired with a Bluetooth headset.
• Fitness and health monitoring function, just like a pedometer, a GPS watch or a wristband.
• All Personal Information Management PIM functions (email, calendar, contact and social networking alert).
• Music for sure.
• Navigation.
• Potentially some apps jus like other regular smartphones.

Ideally we should consider a "smart watch" a device with an operating system, it wouldn't require a synchronization with a smartphone. But truth is that many watches are sold as "smart" but they are actually powerful sport watches (GPS enabled for example, but with a limited set of functions such as the Basis, or the Martian Watch).


Who will be the players?
There are different sort of players coming from various industries or core businesses.

• High tech players: Google, Apple and now Microsoft.



Google model of watch as seen on Business Insider

Apple "iWatch" as seen on CNN site

• Pure GPS players such as Garmin or TomTom:

It's noticeable that Garmin, a leader in GPS could leverage its experience and market share with millions of runners worldwide to introduce such a device. TomTom is currently engaged with Nike through their Nike+Fuel Sport Watch.

• Health and fitness:

Basis and WearIt are two very good watches in that category. They don't claim to be smartwatches but I included them as I considered they have very interesting features.
Basis has heart rate sensors that make the device better than a regular motion sensor watch for a good price tag ($199).
WearIt is a great GPS and Fitness device, the color screen and the User Interface are intuitive and nice.



 Basis on the left seen from below with the sensors which track heart rate, WearIt on the right.

• Traditional handset manufacturers: Sony is releasing its SmartWatch 2 (SW2) soon, LG has produced a device 2-3 years ago without success. Dell is said to work on a similar project.



Sony SW2 coming soon!

• The independent: This space is getting crowded with startups such as Kreyos, Agent and Pebble.
• Kreyos, to me, is the most powerful solution (although it needs a smartphone) with voice and gesture control, water resistant and 5 days battery life, for $169.
• Agent is water resistant, doing wireless charging, but is quite expensive ($299).
• Pebble, like Kreyos, works with a smartphone and costs $150.

Pebble

Kreyos

• Fashion and watch designer. It's likely that some traditional watch builder will sooner or later try to enter this market. But centuries of experience building high precision watches with mechanics is different from building electronics into a tiny piece of hardware. Martian product is trying to combine the elegance of classical watch with a connected device, price is around $250. Some days, we might see TagHeuer or Rolex developing such a device

Martian watches as seen on website

If you want to know more, go to http://www.smartwatchfor.com/, it's a great review of all available devices on the market, it's very up to date and there's a breakout by operating system.

Kreyos has done some comparisons with their competition that you can found here and below (it looks quite accurate though).