At present, the world’s top six mobile phone manufacturers have completed the layout of smart watch product lines.
What is the charm of this small box with a length of only a few centimeters? It attracts more and more mobile phone manufacturers and Internet giants to enter the game?And in this competition, where will the smart watch go in the future? Combining “health services” is the key to overtaking in corners?
Smart watches “beat” traditional watches
More than 400 years ago, smart watches were invented as timekeeping tools, allowing everyone to gain control over time. For many years, traditional watches have been dominating the user’s “wrist”, and when smart watches appeared, the status of traditional watches gradually began to shake.
The most essential difference between traditional watches and smart watches lies in their intelligent functions. The former generally only has the functions of watching the time and changing the dial, while the latter can receive information, listen to music, check health data and install APP, similar to a smart phone.
However, the development process of smart watches has not been smooth sailing. It has also experienced a rugged development route from niche commodities to products needed by the masses. It has been questioned by the market, complaints, and provocations by traditional watch factories. . . . . . The general development process consists of three processes: “exploration period, market launch period, and rapid development period”.
Today, smart watches have successfully achieved “overtaking” and have successfully occupied everyone’s wrists, and sales have surpassed traditional watches.
Take Apple Watch, the representative of smart watches, as an example. According to a research by market research company Strategy Analytics, the sales of Apple Watch, a smart watch from Apple in the United States, far surpassed the entire Swiss watch industry in 2019. Apple Watch’s global shipments in 2019 were 31 million pieces, while the total shipments of all Swiss watch brands were 21 million pieces.
Smart watches have become popular, can they really meet user needs?
As smart watches have entered the stage of rapid development and entered the stage of public acceptance, this has caused the nuggets of the technology giants, and the market competition is fierce.
In recent years, a large number of mobile phone manufacturers at home and abroad such as Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, etc. have all been ready to launch smart watch products; smart watch manufacturers have also continued to make efforts, including Garmin Fitbit, Zepp, etc.; even e-commerce The giant Amazon also got involved and launched a health bracelet called “Halo”.
And thanks to the continuous advancement of sensors, chips and algorithms, more and more functions are now packed into the “small box of a few centimeters” on the wrist. Everyone wants to win a cup in the battle of the “small box of a few centimeters”. soup. At the time when the smart watch is rising, but can it really meet the needs of users?
- Smart watches have entered a stage of rapid development and have gradually received widespread attention and recognition, but smart watches are still niche “toys”.
Data show that in 2014, global shipments of smart watches were 4.6 million units, a growth rate of 142%. Among these 2.7 million units, Samsung accounts for nearly half. At present, Apple is a company that occupies half of the industry’s market share. It has increased the overall sales of smart watches, but this has also forced a large number of watch factories out of the game, attracting more and more mobile phone manufacturers to enter the game.
It can be known that the actual shipments of smart watches have increased, but this may be short-lived, and its stability has to be further studied. - Unlike mobile phones, smart watches are not just products. Smart watches are more and more like a miniature mobile phone bound to everyone’s wrist, but compared to mobile phones, its functions are still lacking.
What mobile phones give users are communication, social, life and other attributes, which are inseparable from consumers. The smart watch imitates the route and cannot replace the mobile phone. Its functions include AI interaction, health detection and other new technologies, which attract many young people to use, but this attribute cannot become the habit of most people.
So in summary, smart watches still cannot meet the needs of users. So why are the giants fighting fiercely?
In fact, the core reason why giants will actively enter the watch field is the added value of smart watches-“health services.”
“Smart watch + health” is the key to overtaking in corners?
It is understood that the health service of the smart watch is actually a variety of sensor devices built into the smart watch, which can monitor the wearer’s heart rate, blood oxygen, sleep and other health data; then after multi-dimensional data collection, the data is connected Enter the health platform, and then evaluate the health risks of the wearer, and develop personalized health management solutions for users.
In short, the giants are looking at the potential of the smart watch in the added value “health” market.
Now that the smartwatch market has been dominated by Apple, more and more giants have begun to compete for the position of this small box. Can the added value of “health services” for smartwatches be able to achieve corner overtaking?
First, the epidemic has awakened the public’s health awareness. The main consumer in the Z era also pays more attention to health preservation. The product market of “health concept” is huge.
In terms of the size of the healthcare market, it is three times larger than the global smartphone market.
Secondly, a few years ago, no one seemed to care about health-related concepts, but this year, due to the impact of the epidemic, the public’s health awareness has been awakened, and business opportunities have gradually emerged. Products, company sales and stock prices related to health concepts have further increased. rise.
And to a certain extent, now that smart watches are combined with health services, it is actually people who use smart watches as health tools. Giants are enjoying the dividends that the epidemic has brought to public health anxiety.
Second, while smart watches combine with health management platforms to change users’ health behaviors, it also opens a new door for the insurance industry, making it harder for smart watches to transition to mass demand products.At present, under wearable devices, the business model of “smart wearable devices + health insurance + services” has great potential and can create the sustainable development of the industry.
Insurance companies use wearable devices to monitor the wearer’s physical condition information, and specifically design insurance products for people with sub-health and chronic diseases. This will open a new door to the insurance industry and also more accurately connect with users and pass their information to third parties. The health platform formulates a reasonable health management plan and at the same time greatly meets the real health needs of users.
In addition, this will boost the commercialization of smart watches, bringing a steady stream of B-end merchants, and the stickiness of C-end users may become more stable.
Third, only health testing cannot achieve overtaking in a curve, and the key to overtaking in a curve is to build a health service ecological closed loop.
As mentioned above, the sound development of the business model actually requires the creation of a “one-stop” service, combining health insurance and third-party health platforms to provide users with standardized and tailored health services.
If smart watches provide health monitoring services alone, this competitiveness is obviously not enough. It must be integrated with health management, insurance and ecology to open up the incremental market in the red sea competition of all-round health service.
With focal length wearable devices, where is the future of smart watches heading?
Smart watches have entered the stage of mass acceptance, with the intention of becoming a “just-needed” product on everyone’s wrists. With the influx of giants and fierce competition on the track, where will smartwatches go in the future?
At present, according to data from the market research organization Counterpoint, the global smartwatch market revenue increased by 20% in the first half of 2020; IDC data also shows that China’s wearable device market rebounded in the second quarter of 2020, an increase of 4.1% year-on-year.
Judging from the data of the two organizations, smart watches have gradually been loved by the public, and the market prospects are very broad. And where the smart watch is headed in the future, first of all depends on its role playing.
First of all, smart watches imitate the functional route of smart phones to the masses, and unlike mobile phones, smart watches are not just products currently needed. And what role it plays among users determines its future direction.
It is not difficult to see from the above that smart watches now play the role of users’ “health assistants”, so the joint development of health insurance finance and health management platforms is the general direction of the future development of smart watches.
Although compared with smart phones, the smart watch market and industry appear smaller, but in the increasingly fierce competition for smart wearable devices, its status will gradually improve. Smart watches are more popular among young and middle-aged people. They can lead fashion and act as a “health assistant”, playing a role that traditional watches cannot replace.
Secondly, with the influx of giants and the escalation of competition, the battle for upgrading smart watches will also accelerate the invasion.
And if the giants want to get a share of the smartwatch field, they need to step out of traditional design thinking. It is important to innovate and play different cards, but the priority is to build their own technical barriers and promote the smartwatch industry to an industry with high barriers to entry. Out of the industry moat.
Finally, it is worth noting that for smart watches, most of their systems use Android. While Android manufacturers have not yet perfected the watch application market, the future upgrade competition may complement the application ecology. And this is the shortcoming that urgently needs to be filled, and it is also an opportunity to achieve a breakthrough.
In addition, the current smart watches are compatible with different models of mobile phones, which is an advantage. But this year when the smart watch boss Apple launched the Apple Watch SE compatible with other mobile phones, the smart watch competition landscape may change.
In the future, companies that manufacture smart watches will have to make breakthroughs in technology and design before they can face the battle for “small boxes of a few centimeters.”
