Why smart watch market share estimates remain meaningless hokum

According to market intelligence outfit Strategy Analytics, the smart watch market is exploding.

It reckons global shipments were up 250 percent year-on-year in Q1 2014 to over 700,000 units.

The key driver of this growth was Samsung, which shipped 500,000 units, taking an estimated 71 percent market share.

What tosh...

Whether the numbers are correct or not - and the fact these are units shipped not sold is a clue - it's pretty clear Samsung is not going to be the market leader on this sort of scale.

After all, back in 2013, rival market intelligence outfit Canalyst estimated that Samsung had a 54 percent market share but that was when it had shipped lots of Galaxy Gear smartphones, many of which were subsequently returned to retailers because it was a rubbish product.

But did Canalyst track those returns? Did it heck.

Of course, the more vital issue with Samsung smart watches is they only work with Samsung phones. Sure, that's a big market but it also demonstrates that Samsung doesn't get the potential of smart watches in the way that Pebble (which supports iOS and Android phone) does - and I'm not just saying that because I'm a Pebbler.

But, perhaps even more importantly, the smart watch market is so nascent at the moment that until we've had a couple of quarters of Android Wear hardware shipping (and more importantly being sold and worn by real people), there's little point even discussing market share percentages.

Still, if you have $6,999 burning a hole in your pocket, feel free to buy Strategy Analytics' no doubt awesome 6-page report. 

Amazon is getting into wearables, but how deep?

With rumours suggesting Amazon is about to launch its own phone, maybe I should start a rumour about the Amazon wearable.

After all, the company has just launched a dedicated storefront for the category.

Called the Wearable Technology store, this is an one-stop shop for trackers, smart watches, health products and wearable cameras. The store launches with FitBit and Samsung Gear as highlighted products, also including content from Gizmodo and to-be-released products like lifestyle camera Narrative. 

Yet as we've seen over the years, Amazon has launched its own e-reader, its tablet and its TV streaming box. And now the phone seems likely. 

The reason in all these cases is Amazon wants to keep its best customers within its own digital world: each device is a vertical silo whereby customers can only buy Amazon content or content that's distributed through Amazon. 

And wearables fit right into this. Wearing an Amazon tracker, the store's recommendation engine could tell you when you need to replace your running shoes (after 500 km), or the best sleeping pills to help with that annoying insomnia.  

So forget delivery drones. You'll soon be wearing Bezos on your wrist. 

Nike’s attempt to roll NikeFuel as a platform play is smart but doomed

In some ways, it’s no surprise that Nike is refocusing away from fitness/wearable hardware to software. Despite the Nike+ brand, the FuelBand tracking bracelet (below) hasn’t found a strong position in the market, while the Nike+ TomTom GPS running watch - which I’ve happily used over the past 2 years - is too expensive compared to the competition.

According to Cnet, the company's decision sees around 70 staff of the 200-strong Nike Digital Sport being laid-off. Interestingly, though, Nike says it will keep supporting and selling the current FuelBand SE, as well as improving its app.

Given the relative small savings the company will be making, and the short/medium-term decision to remain in the market, this clearly is more a strategic than a ‘religious’ move. Fitness hardware will remain a main driver in the wearable category, but Nike has understood that it doesn’t really get hardware innovation.

Instead, it’s hoping thirdparty companies will adopt the NikeFuel training metric; something it’s supporting with its Fuel Lab testing space.

Of course, with the likes of Apple (a big Nike support in iOS) and Google, not to mention every phone maker, currently looking to get into wearables, getting out of the hardware market enables Nike to get its brand into the hardware of multiple vendors.

In that sense, it is a getting out of a highly competitive market in which it is failing in the hope of making more revenue and/or brand kudos with a co-operative platform play.

Sadly, then, the bigger issue for Nike is the entire NikeFuel concept - its proprietary measurement of training - which is entirely vacuous.

"Reading the glucose in your cells?" Just more health monitoring snakeoil

It seems the big push in wearables is measuring body metrics through the skin.

The Basis B1 watch was the first watch to claim to measure heart rate in this way, although plenty of others also now claim this, and it seems that Apple and Google are engaged in more advanced schemes for their rumoured smartwatches.

Similarly, there have been tech demos that can pick up your pulse rate by measuring the slightly reddening of your skin through a webcam as your heart pumps blood.

Still I remain very skeptical about the latest Indiegogo funding project, which claims to be able to automatically measure calorie intake through your skin.

Healbe has already raised $533,096 (over the $100,000 target with 33 days to go) for its GoBe wearable, so people are obviously keen on the technology.

If you want to fund it, the best current deal is a $189 price point against at $300 RRP.

As for how it works, Healbe claims its "continuous piezo pressure sensor" can handle heart rate, while the accelerometer will calculate calorie burn and metabolic rate.

In terms of measuring calorie input, it says it combines "a unique algorithm with measurements from the body manager's pressure, accelerometer, and impedance sensors to show you calories consumed".

In other words, it guesses - just as my current $100 Fitbit Flex does.

Yet, elsewhere, it claims it measures your calorie intake - "by reading the glucose in your cells".

Absolute tosh.