Smart wear shipments increased by 3 times

Since the launch of Google’s first smart glasses, wearable devices have become a major focus of attention in the IT community. Since then, market enthusiasm has increased with the release of Apple Watch. According to the latest market report released by IDC, a market research company, global shipments of wearable devices exceeded 11.4 million units in the first quarter of 2015, almost three times the same period in 2014 (3.8 million). With the rapid increase in the penetration of smartphones, coupled with the need for portability, sensor and battery improvements, portable devices such as wearable devices and cloud-connected devices will become more and more obvious. Therefore, the wearable device will become the next hotspot following the smart phone, which is beyond doubt. However, before this, wearable devices still need to solve the problem of how to become a consumer just need products, otherwise, the growth of shipments may only become the manufacturers' "wishful thinking."

Wearable market ushered in rapid growth

IDC recently released the "Global Market Quarterly Wearable Device Tracking Report". The data shows that in the first quarter of 2015, Fitbit, Xiaomi and Garmin were the top three wearable device manufacturers in the world. However, Apple began selling Apple Watch in April this year. So when the data is released in the second quarter, Apple will be at the forefront of this ranking.

Specifically, Fitbit's equipment shipments were 3.9 million units with a market share of 34%. IDC believes that focusing on the leisure and high-end markets is an important reason for Fitbit's success. Fitbit's market share is 10% higher than that of the second-ranked millet. Millet ranks second mainly by relying on sales of millet bracelets in the Chinese domestic market. IDC believes that Xiaomi will soon further explore the international market and become a competitor of Fitbit.

Similar to Fitbit, Garmin also offers a variety of wearable devices. However, Garmin's market share is only slightly higher than 6%. Samsung is ranked fourth. IDC analysts pointed out that Samsung's poor performance is mainly due to its Gear device can only connect some high-end Samsung smart phones.

Wearable industry development is limited to mobile phones

Although from the perspective of data or product quantity, the development of the wearable market is booming, but there is still a paralysis of internal and external heat, especially the few enterprises that can achieve real profitability today. The reason is that the wearable device is still difficult to escape the "mobile phone accessories" position, especially after the release of the Apple Watch, even IT leaders can hardly make major changes to this, and this will also determine the wearable The future of the industry.

It is undeniable that over-reliance on smart phones is undoubtedly catering to the ecosystem of mobile phone manufacturers and defining itself as part of the ecosystem. This obviously does not meet the original intention of open interfaces for wearable manufacturers. Instead of relying on mobile phones as an independent product, manufacturers must ensure that the user experience also arouses users' desire to buy, and there is still a long way to go.

Second, the endurance capability of wearable devices has become one of the issues that manufacturers urgently need to crack. Judging from the current situation, wearable devices are full of tricks, and a wide variety of products are constantly showing that manufacturers are rich in innovation in wearable products. However, the bottleneck of endurance hinders the popularization of these products. In the end, these products can only be reduced to Vase of the vase.

In addition, the future direction of wearable devices is still being explored, and the development prospects are still not clear. Judging from the current situation, smart phones have not slowed down or even regressed as traditional PCs have slowed down. However, the possibility of further growth is already very small. Therefore, it is certain that as smart phones gradually enter a stable period, it will be difficult for wearable devices to pick up the heavy responsibility for mobile terminal development.

Meet consumers just need to win the future

For now, wearable devices on the market are roughly divided into wristwatches, wristbands, and glasses. Most of them are simple in function, focusing on positioning, communication reminders, ID authentication, health management, and sleep monitoring. However, the real dilemma of wearable devices is the functional and cumbersome asymmetry. Fewer and fewer users will wear wristbands to see information such as calories, walking steps, and night sleep quality. Fewer and fewer users must use the bracelet to awaken their sleeping comforters. Unlock your phone and choose to wear a bracelet.

Predictive analytics platform First Insight conducted a survey of 350 consumers. First Insight used the device to remove the trademark and then used it to test consumers. A total of 15 wearable devices were tested. The results showed that only the Nabu Razer smart wristband scored 9 points, which means that the product is likely to be sold. Sixty-seven percent of the tested wearables were below 5 and 5 points, which means that the product needs improvement or is likely to fail.

Zhao Ping, deputy director of the Consumer Economics Research Department of the Ministry of Commerce, said that overall, wearable device products are still in the initial stage, and they require a high level of operation to use. How to improve the user's comfort experience, especially for middle-aged and elderly people like to operate a television, just press one or two buttons to solve the problem, which needs to be greatly improved. In addition, like the currently popular wristband, how to transfer data to the cloud and transfer it to the Internet is not yet very mature in technology, and it is somewhat close to the status of information islands.

In short, the wearable device must really penetrate the mass consumer market, but also have to pass the product practicality, the maturity of the industry chain and the level of business model perfection. At present, the overall user experience is not outstanding. Perhaps the breakthrough point of future wearable devices is in the vertical segmentation field. Whether it can solve the needs of segmented users will be the key.