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. 

LG gets all operatic about its G Watch

LG seems to be very confident about its G Watch. It's one of the many smart watches that's built using Google's Android Wear wearables platform.

I'm not sure the music appeals to the target audience, though.

Power problems

While I'm excited by the idea of 24/7 wearables, my experience over the past year has not been great.

My Jawbone Up wasn't robust enough to last 3 months, while I lost my Fitbit One within a month. My Fitbit Flex has done better than both, but now requires some card to be jammed into its proprietary charging dock to charge.

What is it with wearable makers and proprietary charging docks/cables?

In other 'bad battery' news, I've been trying out the Moves smartphone software, which was recently purchased by Facebook.

It works okay, but is a total battery drain; it's usually the largest singler battery user on my Nexus 5 at around 30 percent, and - of course - I don't carry my phone with me much either, so it's not even tracking most of my movement. 

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. 

After some calculations, I still don't like NikeFuel

I'm probably starting to obsess, but I've been thinking more about NikeFuel.

Obviously, it has to based on something:  it's not totally made up. My point is that trying to come up with a wide measure of physical activity is a thankless, nigh-on impossible task. Which is why I think NikeFuel will fail to replace the calorie as a better measure.

Still, I wanted to dig down into it, so did some quick calculations.

I've simply analysed my own generation of NikeFuel over the past three years, measuring it against calories burned. Both of these metrics have been generated by my Nike+ TomTom GPS running watch so should be consistent across the period.

Interesting, the activity associated with burning 1 calorie has changed from 2.58 NikeFuel units in 2012, to 3.18 NikeFuel units in 2014; an increase of 19 percent.

However, my average running pace per km has also changed, so I also did a quick calculation to see if this was the reason. But even if we assume the watch isn't increasing the number of calories burned due to a faster pace at all (an extreme assumption), the improvement in my average running pace would only account for around 50 percent of the change in the conversion been a calorie and a NikeFuel unit.

My skepticism about NikeFuel continues...

Facebook buys Moves in personal activity data move

Depending on your point of view, Facebook's acquisition of Moves either underlines the wider importance of the personal tracking market, or blows more air up the rear of an already over inflated bubble.

The company behind Moves is Helsinki-based Protogeo, and according to general concensus, the deal wasn't measured in the billions of an Oculus Rift, Instagram or WhatsApp.

Perhaps what's most interesting is that Moves isn't a hardware solution. To that extent, it's just another iOS/Android app, which uses motion and location data to generate a daily report, including Foursquare-style check-ins.

Indeed, it actively sells itself on being better than hardware gadgets like Fitbit, FuelBand (it doesn't handle sleep, though) or dedicated sports apps like Runkeeper, which is odd, because it only works if you take your phone with you everywhere you go; something we're likely do in terms of commute and general leisure activity but often not in terms of dedicated sports activity, although you can manually enter gym sessions etc.

As for the reason for the Facebook deal, it's hard to tell.

Protogeo says it will be business as usual; notably stating we have no plans to "commingle data with Facebook".

But you have to expect Moves-type functionality to make its way into Facebook, while further extending that software platform into Facebook-branded hardware could be a logical next, next step.

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.