According to International Data Corporation (IDC), global smartphone shipments fell 9% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2022, with the Chinese smartphone market shipping about 67.2 million units, down 14.7% year-on-year.
Fewer and fewer people are changing their phones, leading to a continued downturn in the smartphone market. But on the other side, the market for smartwatches continues to expand. counterpoint data shows that global smartwatch shipments grew 13% year-over-year in Q2 2022, while in China, smartwatch sales grew 48% year-over-year.
We're curious: With cell phone sales continuing to decline, why have smartwatches become the new darling of the digital market?
What is a smartwatch?
"Smartwatches have become popular in the past few years.
Many people may be more familiar with its predecessor, the "smart bracelet". In fact, both of them are a kind of "smart wear" products. The definition of "smart wear" in the encyclopedia is, "the application of wearable technology to the intelligent design of daily wear, the development of wearable (electronic) devices in general.
At present, the most common forms of smart wear include ear wear (including all kinds of headphones), wrist wear (including bracelets, watches, etc.) and head wear (VR/AR devices).
Smart watches, as the most advanced wristband smart wear devices on the market, can be divided into three categories according to the people they serve: children's smart watches focus on accurate positioning, safety and security, learning assistance and other functions, while elderly smart watches focus more on health monitoring; and adult smart watches can assist in fitness, on-the-go office, online payment ...... function It is more comprehensive.
And according to the function, smart watches can also be divided into professional health and sports watches, as well as more all-round full smart watches. But these are all subcategories that have only emerged in recent years. Initially, smartwatches were just "electronic watches" or "digital watches" that used computing technology.
The history goes back to 1972 when Seiko of Japan and Hamilton Watch Company of the United States developed wrist computing technology and released the first ever digital watch, the Pulsar, which was priced at $2,100. Since then, digital watches have continued to improve and evolve into smartwatches, and eventually entered the general consumer market around 2015 with the entry of mainstream brands such as Apple, Huawei and Xiaomi.
And until today, there are still new brands joining the competition in the smartwatch market. Because compared with the saturated smartphone market, the smart wearable market still has huge potential. Smartwatch-related technology, too, has undergone great changes within a decade.
Take Apple's Apple Watch as an example.
In 2015, the first series 0 that went on sale, although it could measure heart rate and connect to Wi-Fi, was more functionally dependent on the phone. It was only in the following years that independent GPS, waterproof swimming, breathing training, ECG, blood oxygen measurement, sleep recording, body temperature sensing and other sports and health monitoring functions were added and gradually became independent of the phone.
And in recent years, with the introduction of SOS emergency help and car accident detection, safety class functions will probably become a major trend in the future iteration of smartwatch updates.
Interestingly, when the first generation of Apple watch was introduced, Apple had launched an Apple Watch Edition priced at more than $12,000, wanting to make it a luxury product similar to traditional watches. The Edition series was cancelled in the following year.
What smartwatches are people buying?
In terms of sales alone, Apple and Huawei are currently the fault Top of the domestic adult smartwatch market, and their sales on Tmall are more than 10 times that of Xiaomi and OPPO, who are in third and fourth place. Xiaomi and OPPO lack more awareness because of their late entry (launching their first smartwatches in 2019 and 2020 respectively), which affects sales to some extent.
Xiaomi is actually one of the pioneer brands in the wearable segment, releasing its first Xiaomi bracelet as early as 2014. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), Xiaomi reached a cumulative 100 million wearable device shipments in 2019 alone, with the wrist wearable - namely the Xiaomi bracelet - taking the credit. But Xiaomi focused on the bracelet, only investing in Huami Technology (the maker of today's Amazfit) in 2014, and did not launch a smartwatch brand that fully belonged to Xiaomi. It was only in recent years that the decline in sales of smart bracelets forced Xiaomi to join the race for the smartwatch market.
The current smartwatch market is less selective than that of cell phones, but the differentiated competition between different brands is still in full swing.
The five top-selling smartwatch brands currently have different product lines under them, targeting the needs of different people. Take Apple as an example, the new Apple Watch released in September this year has three series: SE (cost-effective model), S8 (all-around standard), and Ultra (outdoor professional).
But each brand has a different competitive advantage. For example, this year Apple tried to enter the field of outdoor professional watches with Ultra, but it was not well received by many people. Because Garmin, a brand that started with GPS, has a natural advantage in this division.
Garmin's smartwatch has professional-grade field sports features such as solar charging, high-precision positioning, high-brightness LED lighting, thermal adaptation and altitude adaptation. In comparison, the Apple Watch, which still needs to be charged once a day and a half even after the upgrade (the Ultra battery lasts 36 hours), is too much of a "chicken".
Apple Watch's "one day one charge" battery life experience has been criticized for a long time. Domestic brands, whether Huawei, OPPO or Xiaomi, are far superior to Apple in this regard. Under normal use, the battery life of Huawei GT3 is 14 days, Xiaomi Watch S1 is 12 days, and OPPO Watch 3 can reach 10 days. Compared to Huawei, OPPO and Xiaomi are more affordable.
Although the children's watch market volume is smaller compared to adult watches, it also occupies a considerable part of the market share. According to IDC industry data, the shipment of children's smartwatches in China will be about 15.82 million pieces in 2020, accounting for 38.10% of the total market share of smartwatches.
At present, BBK's sub-brand Little Genius occupies the leading position in the industry because of its early entry, and its total sales on Tmall are more than double that of Huawei, which ranks second. According to prospective data, Little Genius currently accounts for more than 30% share in children's smartwatches, which is comparable to Apple's market share in adult smartwatches.
Why do people buy smartwatches?
Sports recording is the most important reason for consumers to buy smartwatches, with 67.9% of surveyed users indicating this need. Sleep recording, health monitoring, and GPS positioning are also all purposes for which more than half of consumers buy smartwatches.
Xiaoming (pseudonym), who bought Apple Watch Series 7 six months ago, got the smartwatch for the purpose of daily monitoring her health status and promoting better exercise. Six months later, she feels that her daily habits have really changed.
"I can do anything to close the (health index) circle, I will stand more and walk more in my daily life, and now I will get off the subway one stop earlier when I go home, so I will walk 1.5 kilometers more than usual and consume about 80 calories more."
In fact, "health", "positioning" and "sports" are indeed the most used functions by smartwatch users. 61.1% of respondents said they often use the watch's health monitoring function, while more than half said they often use the GPS positioning and sports recording functions.
The functions that can be done by smartphone itself, such as "phone", "WeChat" and "message", are relatively less frequently used by smartwatches: only 32.1%, 25.6%, 25.6% and 25.5% respectively. 32.1%, 25.6%, and 10.10% of respondents said they would often use these functions on their smartwatches.
On Xiaohongshu, apart from brand recommendations and reviews, functional use and appearance design are the most discussed aspects of smartwatch-related notes.
People's demand for the face value of a smartwatch is no less than the pursuit of its functional use. After all, the essence of smart wearable devices is to be "worn" on the body and become a part of personal image. Therefore, in the discussion about smart watches, adjectives such as "good-looking", "cute", "advanced" and "delicate" are often used to describe clothing. Adjectives that are often used to describe clothing also appear frequently.
In terms of functional uses, besides sports and health, "learning," "payment," "social," and "gaming" are also These are the functions that people will pay attention to when selecting a smartwatch.
Xiao Ming, a new smartwatch user, said he often uses Apple Watch to "compete with others and add friends" to further motivate himself to stick to sports and maintain healthy body data in the form of social interaction.
In addition to these relatively practical functions, smartwatches also have a lot of strange and seemingly useless small skills that are sought after by some young people.
As brands continue to increase the dial area in recent years (Apple Watch has evolved from a 38mm variant of the initial generation to a 49mm dial in this year's new Ultra series, expanding by nearly 30%), more features are becoming possible.
Post time: Feb-10-2023
