Smart watches are no longer just the "side business" of mobile phone manufacturers. According to a survey report previously released by market research agency CCS Insights, as early as 2020, Apple's adult smart watch shipments reached 42 million, ranking first, Huawei ranked second with 18 million shipments, and the third-ranked Samsung company also had 11 million shipments.
Among the head mobile phone manufacturers, vivo is a relatively late entry, and the iteration speed of new products is not fast, so far it is only two generations of products. Generally speaking, such a slightly "Buddhist" update strategy is not conducive to doing the amount quickly. However, within 24 hours after the official launch, vivo WATCH 2 quickly became the sales champion of the full-price segment of Tmall and Jingdong' two major e-commerce platforms.
This is actually an "atypical" event. In fact, the huge market shipments have been enough to verify the correctness of the previous definition of smart watch products, with intelligent experience, exercise function and health monitoring as the core. So, under the existing seemingly mature industry system, what is the deeper reason behind the fact that vivo WATCH 2 can be recognized by mass consumers?
To "integrate", it should be more independent
From watches to smart watches, there has been an extremely long period of evolution in the middle. As early as 1940, there was already a watch product that could be used for computing, Mimo Loga, which added a logarithmic table to the outer ring of the dial, based on physical and mechanical structure to achieve computing requirements. Although the implementation path is not so advanced, it jumps out of the traditional idea that watches are only used to "see time".
After entering the 1970s, the development of watches ushered in a new turning point. In 1972, Hamilton released the world's first electric digital watch, the Pulsar, which successfully got rid of traditional mechanical devices and intuitively displayed digital information through LED displays. Since then, more and more manufacturers have begun to try different product ideas, which has also laid the foundation for the transformation of watches to intelligence.
For who is the first modern smart watch in the true sense, there has been no consensus. Some people think that the new electronic watches with independent storage space that can provide functional experiences such as computing, FM, watching TV, etc., can already be counted as early modern smart watches. Some people also believe that equipped with a standalone system and can run independent applications is the real smart watch.
Looking back at this point in time, in fact, the product that is closer to the modern smart watch is the Launch of LiveView by Sony Ericsson in 2010, when the official definition of it was a wrist display, which is connected through Bluetooth and Android smartphones to display some content on the mobile phone. This product logic is already very close to today's smart watches.
On the basis of LiveView, there was the Sony SmartWatch of 2012. The positioning of the SmartWatch is relatively clear, that is, as an accessory to Sony mobile phones. After successfully connecting with the mobile phone, the watch can synchronize the SMS, email and other information in the mobile phone, and can also receive the incoming call reminder on the mobile phone to hang up.
The Samsung Galaxy Gear released the following year and the Sony SmartWatch have a very similar route, and they also need to be used with mobile phones to achieve more functional experience. And smart watches began to enter the stage of fully intelligent development, which is actually after 2014. At that year's I/O conference, Google officially announced the Android Wear system, and Apple also announced the Apple Watch.
Since the beginning of 2014, the smart watch industry has gone through nearly 8 years. After continuous exploration and trial and error, manufacturers have basically reached an agreement on the functional level of smart watches, including Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and other head brands, everyone is around the intelligent experience, exercise function and health monitoring capabilities of the three core points to do products.
Taking the results as a reference standard to push back, in fact, what the industry has been doing before is to clarify the correct functional development direction of smart watches. Facts have also proved that the excellent intelligent experience, rich sports functions and comprehensive health monitoring capabilities have indeed made smart watches recognized by mass consumers, which is also the basis for the annual shipment of such products to exceed 100 million.
However, the beautiful shipment data does not mean that the smartwatch industry can completely "lie flat". Continuous optimization of the iterative functional experience, although the smart watch is one step closer to the goal of full-scenario application, but in essence, the vast majority of smart watches are still not separated from the dependence on mobile phones, and if you want to get a complete functional experience, you still need the watch and the mobile phone to cooperate.
This obviously does not meet the definition of "good product", the user experience will have a strong sense of fragmentation, and the free use of wearable devices has not been maximized. So in the "second half", in addition to the need for smart watches to do more meaningful attempts at the functional level such as health monitoring, more important point is to get rid of the dependence on mobile phones and have independent communication capabilities.
Take the scenario of answering and receiving phone calls as an example. In today's smart watches, receiving and receiving calls is not a new feature, and mainstream products on the market in the past two years have done this. However, the so-call function of the previous smart watch is very different from the call function we understand in a broad sense, which is essentially achieved through the mobile phone, and once it exceeds the effective connection range of Bluetooth, it cannot be used normally.
This embarrassment doesn't exist at all on vivo WATCH 2. Because it supports eSIM independent communication, it has its own network connection capabilities, so you can still answer or make calls on your watch even when your phone isn't around. If you forget to carry your mobile phone when you go out, or encounter a special situation where your mobile phone is out of power, the watch can ensure that you will not be in a state of disconnection.
Independent communication capabilities will also empower intelligent experiences. As an important development direction of smart watches, almost all manufacturers are working hard to create an ecological application system for watches, and some smart watches even have independent app stores to facilitate users to obtain the third-party applications they want. However, due to the need to connect to the network through a mobile phone or Wi-Fi, the actual use experience will be much discounted.
Represented by vivo WATCH 2, after having the independent communication capability of eSIM, it is a good way to make up for the "gap" left in the current watch application ecological construction process, and also makes the intelligent experience more convenient. When you go out for a run, you don't need to put your phone in your pocket, and you can open the NetEase Cloud Music App in your watch to listen to music online anytime and anywhere.
Return to the essence of "watch" to make products
Smart watches, essentially "smart + watches", talk about intelligent experience, should not be separated from the basic characteristics of the watch should have. Looking back at the era of mechanical watches, the most worry-free point of the experience end is that there is no so-called battery life anxiety. When you go out, you don't need to worry about whether you have a watch charger with you all the time, and you don't have to worry about the watch becoming a pure decoration because of the lack of power.
Smart watches, like other electronic devices, if there is no electricity, all functional experiences will become empty talk. Therefore, from the beginning of the 2014 smart watch into the public vision to the present, the battery life has always been the place where such products have been criticized by everyone. Especially after entering the era of all-intelligence, with the continuous increase of various new features, the problem of battery life has become more and more prominent.
In general, the most effective solution to make electronic products have a better level of battery life is to equip it with a larger capacity battery. But the interior space of the smartwatch is indeed too small, and this path is difficult to follow. Therefore, throttling has become the only feasible way at this stage, and manufacturers usually work power-saving solutions and chip architectures.
Although the general direction, the processing concept of each brand is not much different, but the specific implementation plan is different, reflected in the actual use level, there will be a more obvious gap. Smart watches like vivo WATCH 2 that can achieve 7 days of battery life under the eSIM function are actually rare, or it is the only smart watch product with this ability.
After the endurance is improved, it is equivalent to returning to the original appearance of the "watch", which can provide excellent underlying support for the experience of the watch, and at the same time bring the user's focus to the matter of worry-free use. Taking the health monitoring function as an example, the reason why smart watches can take this as the core development direction is partly due to the use characteristics of wearing it all over the body, but this is not all.
For true 24-hour real-time heart rate monitoring or oxygen saturation testing, a very important prerequisite is that the vivo WATCH 2 has a long enough battery life. For users, continuous health data collection can give us a clear understanding of their own sign changes in different time periods, and once there is an abnormal situation, corresponding measures can be taken in time.
In addition to constantly polishing the functional experience, the future smart watch also needs to think about what kind of attributes the watch. This extends to another topic: pattern selection. At present, the smart watches on the market can be roughly divided into two categories, one is the square design represented by apple watch, and the other is the circular scheme of vivo WATCH 2.
In fact, the product concept conveyed by different forms will be very different. The screen form of the square watch is closer to the large-screen device such as mobile phone or PC, and the advantages are mainly reflected in two aspects. One is the square screen, which can improve the content display effect of the small screen to a certain extent; the other is convenient for touch interaction on the watch.
The circular design scheme is closer to the appearance of a traditional watch. From the mechanical watch era to the electronic watch era, in the past few decades, the round watch has been occupying the mainstream position, in fact, more in line with most people's cognition and aesthetics of such devices as watches, no matter what age group of users, wearing vivo WATCH 2 will not have a sense of violation, which is the experience that square watches cannot provide.
Starting from the dimension of functional attributes, square smart watches have innate advantages. However, from another perspective, the aesthetic design is more likely to be made of a round watch, and it is easier to be accepted by a wide range of users. In a short period of time, the two product forms will inevitably present a situation of confrontation, but if you want to make smart watches really break the circle and challenge traditional high-end watches, round watches may have more opportunities.
Meaningful innovation is needed
Whether it is a mobile phone, a PC or a smart watch, from landing to the final maturity, it is moving forward in continuous exploration, and each stage of development also has different demands. As we mentioned earlier, at the beginning of the birth of smart watches, people are more at the functional level to do various attempts, hoping to find a landing point that can truly serve users.
When the correctness of the functional direction is clear, and after the experience side has been shown, if you want to continue to move forward, you need to think from a higher dimension, how to do innovation next with such products, or what kind of posture the smart watch that everyone wants should appear on the wrist.
In the future, functional innovation will remain the key to the continued attractiveness of smartwatches. However, such products want to go further, and the choice of innovation direction may still have to expand to more dimensions. The eSIM independent communication and 7-day long battery life emphasized on the vivo WATCH 2 are one of the directions, but the industry needs more new thinking to emerge.