image credit to http://www.brandwatch.com/

Do Wearables Matter?

Wearable technology is all the rage within the tech industry these days. With new consumer products being released by all the major tech players including Google, Apple, Samsung and even Intel, who just released a smart fashionable bracelet designed for women. It’s hard to keep up. For the purpose of this post, I will mostly focus on smart watches.

I think the main questions on people’s minds at this early stage is “Why do I need a smart watch when I have my smartphone on me all the time?”

The big complaint I hear people say is that these first generation smart watches are too dependent on the person’s smartphone. Seems people would like to be able to leave their phones behind, at least temporarily without losing connectivity to email, text messages or other regular alerts. Those watches are definitely coming soon, but for now, most smart watches have no GPS and no wifi and no cell connection. It relies entirely on the connectivity of the smartphone it is attached to.

So the question still remains, “Why do I need one?”, short answer is because it’s already an amazing technology, because you will instantly use your phone less while responding to messages quicker, because it is the future. Once in a while you come across products that when used for the first time, just feels right. You remember your first iPod, right? Smart watches are a lot like that experience. Wearables are a natural next step, and it feels obvious, like why haven’t we done this sooner?

From startups launching their first product to large established brands trying to reach customers, everyone needs to be thinking about how this will impact their industry moving forward. How will wearables impact the ways brands reach their audiences? And how will businesses position themselves to take advantage?

The adoption rate of smart-watches will be exponential, much faster than the adoption rate we saw with smartphones. When we look at the large variety of wearable products that will be on the market over the next 18 to 24 months and the innovations that come with it, it’s easy to see how astonishing of an impact this will have on our daily lives. We’ll wonder how we ever managed without it and many businesses will wonder why they didn’t see it coming.