Smartwatches are the products that no one wants to buy at the moment, or at least that's what a study published today tells us. According to an American company, only 39.5 million Americans used a wearable during 2015, that is, almost half of what was initially estimated.
Although the wearables market grew by 24.7% instead of 60%, as was initially estimated, in 2016 only 15.8% of Americans own a smartwatch, and the percentage will increase to only 21.1% by 2020. The very small increase is due mainly due to the fact that wearables are no longer desired by customers because they do not have sufficiently important functions.
From Apple Watch to Pebble, no wearable has managed to maintain the interest of customers from all over the world because it does not offer really attractive functions. Moreover, no one seems to find a real utility for these products, they offer fractional functions from other gadgets, but without a really good experience.
Apart from the lack of justification for the purchase, many users argue that these gadgets are too expensive, especially smartwatches. Moreover, most of them are dependent on a smartphone, so they don't work without it, so people are not really interested in investing in products that are not really useful.
"Before Apple launched its Watch, fitness trackers dominated the wearables space, and consumer surveys consistently found that tracking health and fitness was the main reason people were interested in wearables. They also reported high price-sensitivity. Without a clear use case for smart watches—which have more features than fitness trackers, but significant overlap with smartphone functionality—the more sophisticated, expensive devices have not caught on as quickly as expected."
Of course, all these problems existed one or two years ago, but in the meantime no one managed to find a method to make people understand what smartwatches are really useful for.
