Global smartwatch shipments fell 7% YoY in 2024, the market's first ever decline; Apple fell 19% while Huawei grew 35%, Xiaomi grew 135%, and Samsung grew 3%.
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- The global smartwatch market fell 7% in 2024, the first ever decline in the overall market.
- Apple retained its top position, despite a 19% YoY decline in shipments due to tighter competition and weaker upgrade cycles.
- China captured the biggest shipment share for the first time, driven by the strong performance of Chinese brands including Huawei, Xiaomi and BBK (Imoo).
- Kids smartwatch was the only segment to witness a rise, as parents' awareness increased, and brands expanded in this category.
its good to triage your notifications without jumping on the phone. its also been useful to see my pulse at times, great for a silent timer.
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I literally have no clue what the point of these devices is
I have ADHD, so a massive bonus of a smart watch for me is not having to look at my phone every time I get a notification. If I do, there's a strong likelihood that I'll just keep on looking at it. Having notifications go to my watch means I only get my phone out for important ones.
Also, an alarm clock that taps my wrist without waking up my wife at 5:30am is worth its weight in gold.
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I literally have no clue what the point of these devices is
I got my first watch, a pebble as a novelty. But really ended up enjoying it by being able to have my phone on silent and still get notifications via the watch. This was especially important while I was working as a theatre manager and front of house audio engineer. I could get texts and such from my crew while my phone was silent as to not interrupt the show. The day I left the job I put the watch in a drawer (5 years ago) and have never used it since.
I would like a health tracker with minimal or no screen that I can get notices such as phone calls and texts from my wife and kids as I still keep my phone in silent and often miss calls.
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- The global smartwatch market fell 7% in 2024, the first ever decline in the overall market.
- Apple retained its top position, despite a 19% YoY decline in shipments due to tighter competition and weaker upgrade cycles.
- China captured the biggest shipment share for the first time, driven by the strong performance of Chinese brands including Huawei, Xiaomi and BBK (Imoo).
- Kids smartwatch was the only segment to witness a rise, as parents' awareness increased, and brands expanded in this category.
Regular smart watches are such a luxury good that I'm surprised they've been growing up until last year. Realistically most people don't need a smart phone that's more than like $300 and I can't imagine spending more than that on a smart watch which just duplicates most of the features of a smart phone (and adds a few more sensors if you're lucky).
The rise in kids smart watches is a bit alarming to me, though. If the reason for it is truly that parents want to track their kids more, that's really bad for the kids for two big reasons. First being that kids need to learn how to behave without their parents always watching, and second is that if the parent can see where the kid is then probably so can the company who made the smart watch. Maybe they'll make a smartwatch which sends location data over something like the Signal protocol to mitigate 3rd party tracking, but I doubt there's a big enough demand for that for any of the major companies to do that on their own.
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- The global smartwatch market fell 7% in 2024, the first ever decline in the overall market.
- Apple retained its top position, despite a 19% YoY decline in shipments due to tighter competition and weaker upgrade cycles.
- China captured the biggest shipment share for the first time, driven by the strong performance of Chinese brands including Huawei, Xiaomi and BBK (Imoo).
- Kids smartwatch was the only segment to witness a rise, as parents' awareness increased, and brands expanded in this category.
I just sold my Pixel Watch and bought a Withings Scanwatch.
Daily charging is annoying. I stopped using it to pay because then I'd have to set up a PIN, and then type in the PIN every time I want to use it. I'm not without my phone and it's more convenient to pay with.
I did like the health monitoring features, but the daily charging made it intrusive and another thing I had to actively monitor.
Scanwatch gives me 30 days of battery, all the health tracking, and some basic notifications, which is fine but I'd get it even without that.
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I just sold my Pixel Watch and bought a Withings Scanwatch.
Daily charging is annoying. I stopped using it to pay because then I'd have to set up a PIN, and then type in the PIN every time I want to use it. I'm not without my phone and it's more convenient to pay with.
I did like the health monitoring features, but the daily charging made it intrusive and another thing I had to actively monitor.
Scanwatch gives me 30 days of battery, all the health tracking, and some basic notifications, which is fine but I'd get it even without that.
I stopped using it to pay because then I'd have to set up a PIN, and then type in the PIN every time I want to use it
This shocked me when I went from my Galaxy Watch 3 to a Galaxy Watch 6. I used to only have to put a PIN when I wanted to pay, but now it's anything on the watch?
Because of that, I also disabled the payment app.
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Pebble ftw
Is Pebble still alive? I quit using mine a long time ago because I wound up getting an AW, but I’ve still kept it somewhere
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I had an Apple Watch for a while. I used it to track my steps and workouts and to monitor some notifications. Once in forever I’d pick up a call on it because my hands were full.
Eventually I realized I never actually DID anything with the fitness info, the notifications were annoying and stressful, and the times I’d use it as a communicator I could count on one hand.
When the battery finally started dying I couldn’t justify the expense of a new one.
The thing actively made my life worse!
Yeah, I was an early adopter of a smartwatch. I had an android watch before apple watch was even a thing. One day, while on vacation in Croatia, I jumped off a boat into the Adriatic with it on, and those early models weren't really waterproof. I kinda shook it off because like you said, I never really used or cared about any of the data, and I was kinda over it as a gimmicky, fairly useless thing. It was kinda cool to be able to read and reply to texts without taking my phone out of my pocket, but it wasn't a game changer. Then my birthday came around and my gf got me a new smartwatch, so I kinda had to wear one again for a while. I wore it for a bit, and then one day, just kinda stopped charging and using it altogether. There is no wow factor with them imo.
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I stopped using it to pay because then I'd have to set up a PIN, and then type in the PIN every time I want to use it
This shocked me when I went from my Galaxy Watch 3 to a Galaxy Watch 6. I used to only have to put a PIN when I wanted to pay, but now it's anything on the watch?
Because of that, I also disabled the payment app.
I honestly don't remember how pervasive the need for a PIN was on the Pixel Watch, but even if it was only for purchases, it would invariably take 10X as long to switch to the Wallet when I was at checkout, or I would fumble hitting the right numbers on the small screen.
With my phone, if I'm not unlocking it with my finger as I pull it from my pocket, I can do it as part of the payment process very easily.
The whole experience of paying with my watch was lacking. If the phone and watch are connected via BT, then I feel like the wallet on the watch should just work without a PIN. Or at most a voice confirmation.
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Is Pebble still alive? I quit using mine a long time ago because I wound up getting an AW, but I’ve still kept it somewhere
they are still kickin'
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