Although Pebble was not one of the top 3 players in the industry, and it is quite obvious that they mismanaged their growth, this still marks a turning point for the following reasons:
- Citizen was turned-down by Pebble last-year, on a buy-out deal in excess of $700 million USD. The Fitbit deal is less than 1/10 of that, showing that there wasn't anyone else willing to give any significant amount of money for Pebble
- The Pebble watch was positioned as a mass-market product. This shows that there isn't such a market out there for the current form of a generic purpose smartphone on your wrist (as I covered before: http://would-that-be-interesting-to-you.blogspot.hk/2015/03/opinion-piece-big-consumer-electronics.html)
If we take a look at the stats from IDC:
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| http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS41875116 |
- Wearables, in their current form, have a few niche markets in the sporting-activity-tracking-related segment, and not much beyond that
- Although largely declining, Apple still sell a good number of smartwatches, which I believe can be attributed to a fashion/lifestyle statement from its buyers. This, however, is a fringe market which makes it unlikely to be sustainable
- Until there's a clear differentiator between a smartwatch and a smartphone which could make a compelling argument for a separate, mass-market, multi-purpose smartwatch, the best that can be hoped for vendors is to compete with digital watches
- I think there is a niche market for timepieces "add-ons" to make them interactive (notifications) without tempering with their intrinsic long-term value. This could take the form of attachment to traditional watches, smart-rings, bands, etc. This seems to be the only current and distinctive purpose of a smartwatch
