Are smart watches dumb?

Samsung Smart Watch

Omega Seamaster

Taking a break from blogging about the news, which can be quite depressing at times, I turn my attention instead to the future! Smart Watches. Or, so they say. Samsung revealed details of its impending offering to the burgeoning smart phone market with the Samsung Gear, or Galaxy Gear (let us hope they come up with a better name before launch day). It looks a nifty offering. I was tempted to buy one of the smart watches on the market recently, Sony or Pebble or whatever but in the looks and function department neither really leapt off the webpage at me and screamed "YOU MUST OWN ME!". It would be cool, sure, but if I am going to buy a watch it would have to be pretty special to tempt me away from the analog world. I love my phone, and I love tech but there is something about a beautiful Omega watch that is classic and timeless. Not Rolex, Rolex is for poseurs who don't understand watches and don't understand beauty. No, if I am going to buy a smart watch it has to be a thing of classic understated beauty while retaining the full functionality of a smart phone in miniature. So, no tall order then! Still Samsung looks like they might have nailed it. The beast has a flexible screen that wraps around your wrist instead of the 'ipod in miniature cellotaped to a cheap looking strap' that Sony currently offers. And if Samsung can get in early and beat Apple to market they could perhaps set the pace in the way that the latter did with the smart phone market. So, is it time to buy up Samsung shares too?

Perhaps not. Analysts are divided about the extent of the demand for a smart watch. Google is focused on Google Glass for that reason. And this could be the reason why the much mooted Apple Watch has yet to become a concrete reality. Do people really want a smart watch?

Well, market research says 'not really'. Much of the functionality of a smart phone is lost in miniaturising it, and while you could pick up the odd message via twitter or facebook, typing on smart phones is still a problem in itself without miniaturisation. You could dictate your message sure, but Voice Recognition Software is rarely sophisticated and competent enough to deal with anyone who does not speak the Queen's English as this hilarious clip from the Scottish sketch show "Burnistoun" highlights. I can see who is calling me, and hang up on them, without fishing around in my pocket. Or leave the ipod at home and be frustrated as phone, mp3 player and watch die because blatantly the battery would not last long enough for me to get to work in the morning let alone the rest of the day! But whatever functions and features these smart phones have they are certainly one up on the original analog watch and there are still millions of them sold every year. And let us not forget that when the smart phone came out there were analysts among us who thought that they would not catch on, myself included. Same with tablets: Which I still cannot understand especially given the number I have accidentally destroyed! So, smart watches might indeed be the next big thing. You never know.  But let us not pretend they are anything other than just watches, a neat idea that might make lives a little easier...and then we can go back to figuring out how to end world hunger, war, oppression, climate change and how we are going to get off this rock and explore space!

"Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea." - Douglas Adams 'Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy'