Smartwatches the next big idea as sales of smartphones slacken

Smartwatches the next big idea as sales of smartphones slacken

Oh, you've got a Pebble," said the security researcher, Mikko Hypponen, looking at the smart watch on my wrist. "Me too. But mine" – he pressed a button on the black device on his wrist, and the small black-and-white screen washed over until a familar shape appeared – "mine has Flappy Bird."
He proceeded to demonstrate how he could play the maddening smartphone game on a wrist-sized screen, pressing the two buttons at its side to make the frequently ill-fated bird avoid the deadly pipes. Hypponen's quirky use of his Pebble is at least one answer to the question: what are smart watches for? As sales of smartphones slacken, because almost everyone who wants one has one, hardware companies are looking around for other gadgets to sell us. And the smartwatch is their latest idea. If they can sell us one each they're in the money. And if they can get us using apps on them, that would be even better.
It is hotly anticipated that LG will join the select group, which includes its South Korean rival Samsung, the US-based Pebble, Japan's Sony and a host of smaller players with names like Meta, Cuckoo and I'm Watch (sic). Motorola, which Google is selling to China's Lenovo, is also expected to introduce a smartwatch – the Moto 360 – this summer.
Although Google's Android software runs about three-quarters of the smartphones on sale outside China, there is more of a battle to see who will dominate the supposedly emerging smartwatch business. There were about 1.1m Android smartwatches shipped in 2013, according to the research company Strategy Analytics, compared to 190,000 Pebbles. But Samsung's new Gear 2 watch, released in April alongside its Galaxy S5 smartphone) uses Samsung's own software, not Google's; Pebble too continues to push ahead.
That could all change imminently: Google is releasing the Android Wear operating system software for LG's G-Watch and Moto 360 – both of which have only been glimpsed so far as Photoshopped mockups. Experience suggests that the real things will probably be less pretty, significantly heavier and have less battery life. But Android Wear will bring information about transport delays, weather and so on via the Google Now software presently found on Android phones.
Two questions about smartwatches. First: what are we really going to do with them? The answer, according to their makers, is see notifications from your smartphone, but without having to take it out of your pocket or bag. Using a low-power Bluetooth wireless connection, your watch can know about the emails, tweets and Facebook updates your phone has received, and show them on its screen. And, perhaps, play Flappy Bird.
Alternatively, the watch can control a phone, answering or rejecting calls, changing the music that's playing, or changing the volume. And with suitable apps on board, the watch becomes a tiny computer in its own right.
But perhaps the most important question is: if smartwatches are so great, why hasn't Apple made one? The answer may be that it just doesn't feel the time is right. Senior Apple executives have expressed interest in my Pebble (they've already bought their own, for experimentation) but Apple tends not to do anything until it judges that a market is ready. However it has registered the "iWatch" trademark in Europe and Japan.
Fewer people will want a smartwatch than a smartphone. A wander through eBay soon turns up people selling their first-generation Samsung Gear ("used once" is a common refrain). No one has yet figured out how to make a wearable computer desirable. Will Android Wear – or an Apple iWatch – change that?
It may be a problem with this whole generation of wearable devices. After six weeks wearing Google's Glass – which has a camera and small screen fitted just above the right eye – the BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones has regretfully decided that "in its present form with its current software, Google Glass is a failure".
It's too early to say that about smartwatches. But there is the risk that like Google Glass, their manufacturers will promise much and find the devices fly no longer than the average Flappy Bird.