{"id":652685,"date":"2013-04-16T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2013-04-16T16:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=799539"},"modified":"2013-04-16T12:00:34","modified_gmt":"2013-04-16T16:00:34","slug":"smartwatch-market-could-be-a-third-the-size-of-the-netbook-market-this-year-maybe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/652685","title":{"rendered":"Smartwatch Market Could Be A Third The Size Of The Netbook Market This Year (Maybe)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1477041425_bc134130c7\"<\/p>\n

It’s almost like Apple<\/a>, Google<\/a>, Samsung<\/a> and Microsoft<\/a> have actually launched smartwatches. Except of course they haven’t. But who cares! Analyst house ABI Research has been stroking its collective beard and come up with a forecast<\/a> for the size of the nascent smartwatch market. And — drum roll please! — it reckons you can bank on more than 1.2 million of the wrist-strapped gizmos shipping this year.<\/p>\n

Put another way, that’s about as many Raspberry Pi microcomputers<\/a> shipped in its first year on sale. Or just over a third as many netbooks<\/a> are predicted to ship this year (3.97 million units globally, according to\u00a0IHS iSuppli). Which means smartwatches could be\u00a0about as popular as a niche gadget for learning about computing<\/a>\/making a DIY robot<\/a>, but less popular than the PC that’s\u00a0cannonballing towards extinction<\/a>\u00a0the quickest.<\/p>\n

Which sounds about as plausible as any guesstimate produced prior to any mainstream tech companies actually launching product. If you’re in the business of reading tea\u00a0 leaves it helps if you wait for someone to make a brew before doing divinations.<\/p>\n

ABI says its “market intelligence” of the “strong potential emergence of smart watches” — note the careful hedge, and don’t bet the farm on this one just yet — is based on the emergence over the past nine months of “a number of new smart watches”, which is\u00a0likely referring to Kickstarter-funded Pebble<\/a> and its myriad of wrist-coveting, crowdfunded competitors.<\/p>\n

The analyst also says\u00a0its forecast is based on\u00a0”contributing factors” that it reckons are encouraging the smartwatch market to (maybe) emerge\u00a0from its Kickstarter-powered chrysalis\u00a0and (possibly) blossom\u00a0into a standalone butterfly — namely:<\/p>\n

\n

…the high penetration of smartphones in many world markets,\u00a0the wide availability and low cost of MEMS sensors, energy efficient connectivity technologies such as Bluetooth 4.0, and a flourishing app ecosystem.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Even though the smartwatch market remains a partially formed, largely limp-wristed creature, listlessly stuck within its chrysalis of potential, ABI has already spotted four categories hoping to fly in the months and years ahead — aka: notification types (such as MetaWatch<\/a> and Cookoo<\/a>); voice operational smartwatches (such as Martian<\/a>); hybrid smartwatches; and completely independent smartwatches — i.e. smartwatches that have their own OS and aren’t just playing second fiddle to a smartphone.<\/p>\n

In the latter category, ABI cites\u00a0I\u2019m Watch<\/a> as an example but also suggests that other “possible archetypes” could be “Apple\u2019s hotly anticipated iWatch<\/a>, Samsung\u2019s Galaxy Altius and Microsoft[‘s ‘Windows Watch’, or whatever catchy name Redmond ends up bestowing on it, if indeed it ends up making such a thing at all]. If Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos or Justin Bieber decide to launch their own Android-powered smartwatches ABI would presumably add those in here too.<\/p>\n

\u201cSmartwatches that replicate the functionality of a mobile handset or smartphone are not yet commercially feasible, though the technologies are certainly being prepared,\u201d adds senior analyst Joshua\u00a0Flood in a quasi-illuminating statement of the potential factors that could influence this nascent market’s potential as the hands on our (non-smart)watches push inexorably on.<\/p>\n

[Image\u00a0by\u00a0Telstar Logistics<\/a>\u00a0via Flickr<\/a>]<\/p>\n

<\/a> <\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s almost like Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft have actually launched smartwatches. Except of course they haven’t. But who cares! Analyst house ABI Research has been stroking its collective beard and come up with a forecast for the size of the nascent smartwatch market. And — drum roll please! — it reckons you can bank […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}