The Year of the Smartwatch
August 14, 2013
Switzerland, rejoice! Wrist-based technology may be about to boom again. Quartz tells us that “Almost Every Major Consumer Electronics Manufacturer is Now Working on a Smart Watch.” Could this be the way to shake the traditional mobile phone? It seems like the logical next step toward the implantation of chips in our heads. (Really, can that be more than a decade or two away?)
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Right now, wrist-mounted tech seems to be the next big thing in hardware. Writer Christopher Mims explains:
“Competition among makers of smartphones and the endless quest for the next big thing has nearly every major consumer electronics manufacturer working on a smart watch or at least contemplating it. The latest is Dell, whose global VP of personal computing just told The Guardian that the company is thinking about a smart watch despite ‘challenges in cost, and how to make it a really good experience.’ Analysts are declaring 2013 the year of the smart watch, and seem sure that an entirely new product category is about to be born.”
The article examines projects at eleven companies from Acer to Toshiba, some complete with pictures. Most remind me of digital watches circa 1980. The only major electronics companies not (yet) rumored to be developing such a device are HP, HTC, Lenovo and Nokia.
Though most of these products are slated for launch either next year or in the nebulous future, the list does include the Kickstarter-funded Pebble, produced by Allerta and now available at Best Buy. (The development of the Pebble was informed by production of BlackBerry’s InPulse, which BlackBerry had outsourced to Allerta. The InPulse was launched in 2010, but may have been a few years too early—it was shortly discontinued.)
So, is this the next thing in convenient technology, or will consumers reject the impulse to strap our phones to our wrists? There are those of us would prefer to skip straight to the HUD approach of Google Glass. In the long run, both seem to me just stepping stones on the road to cyborg-dom. . . . Hmm, is it possible that I consume too much science fiction? I suppose only time will tell.
Cynthia Murrell, August 14, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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