Tag: smart watch

Smartwatch sales leaders in the U.S. are clearly Samsung and Pebble

| June 18, 2014

These two companies currently make up 96 percent of American sales for these wearables.

According to a recent survey, Samsung and Pebble are the smartwatch manufacturers that have massively dominated the category since October, in terms of sales, as Gear devices currently make up an estimated 78 percent of the total $96 million in revenue for that market, while Pebble holds the majority of the remainder, at 18 percent.

It has been estimated that since October 2013, there have been about half a million of these devices sold in the U.S.

The data was released by the Weekly Tracking Service from NPD Group, a market research company, which said that “almost half a million smartwatches have been sold in the U.S. since October 2013 and category incumbents, Samsung and Pebble, dominate the market.” NPD ‘s recent survey includes data that spans from October 6 of last year, to May 25.

Details about the smartwatch sales from other companies such as Qualcomm and Sony were not revealed in the report.

Smartwatch SalesDuring that period of time, one in three of all of the wristwatch wearable technology devices were sold within the 2013 holiday season, said the report. NPD executive director of industry analysis, Ben Arnold, explained that they are predicting that that the sales of these devices will only continue to grow throughout this year. He added that “With nearly $100 million in US sales in less than a year, the category is off to a promising start with just two major brands.”

The report went on to say that the Wearable Technology Study from NPD showed that about 20 percent of consumers feel that they are interested in actually buying one of these devices, except that the cost is currently prohibitively high. In the United States, the price of the average smartwatch is currently $189, with devices ranging from about $160 to $257.

Arnold went on to say that as manufacturers spot the opportunity to combine the sale of these wearables with that of smartphones, the prices of the watches have started to dip down into the range that consumers would consider to be more affordable. He stated that “Like any new product category, the overall ASP (average selling price) on these devices will decline as the market becomes more diverse with budget, mid-level, and premium product offerings.”

Smartwatch from Pebble obtains long awaited new feature

| June 13, 2014

The wearable technology device has just been updated to include volume controls, among other things.

Pebble recently rolled out a range of new updates that have added some rather small but quite meaningful improvements to its popular smartwatch, including a few that have been expected for some time now.

Among these updates, one of the most significant is the addition of volume controls to this wearable tech.

Aside from that, the smartphone now also has the ability to recognize apps from the launcher of the device. Owners have been waiting for a long time for the Pebble to offer them the opportunity to control the music volume from their wristwatches, which have been able to control the playback since the wearable tech device first hit the market shelves.

The company announced in a blog post that it was bringing this new control to its smartwatch.

Smartwatches - Music app and volume controlThe blog post read that “It’s been a long time since we first demoed volume control in the Pebble Music app back in the day, so we’re really glad to be bringing this feature onboard.” The wearable tech update also gave the ability for apps to be recognized in its launcher, and for those applications to be manually sorted.

In previous versions, the order in which the applications appeared had been static and was not customizable by the wearer. That has been changed in this latest update so that users are able to place items within the launcher into the order that they desire by holding down the select button until the app appears to tremble. It can then be moved to its new position on the list.

These two small but meaningful additions were added as a part of an update to the firmware, itself. This means that the smartwatch users will be required to update their current mobile device app by selecting the support menu and the “check for updates” option. The users of the Pebble through iOS will need to update their iOS application before they will be able to obtain their new firmware. That app was also updated just recently to be able to support the new firmware as well as to add support for iBeacon.