Written by Star Evening
Editor/ Li Wenjie
排版/ Annalee
Spring is the marathon season. This year coincides with the year of sports, and sometimes there are more than 20 events in a single weekend, which attracts more and more runners to join it.
Recently, an entry of "post-00 girls running marathons with smart watch pace" rushed to the hot search, and many running enthusiasts have said, "Who runs a marathon without wearing a smart watch?" In just a few years, smart watches have evolved from simple display tools to all-round life assistants, and consumer needs are also developing towards diversification and personalization.
In this market, Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and other manufacturers have fought hard, and when the consumer electronics market is not strong enough, smart watches have naturally become an incremental market that can be deeply touched.
So what kind of people is the smart watch, which still has a broad space for development in terms of product design, functional innovation or ecological construction?
It's "beautiful waste" and it's also an "electronic nanny"
Every weekend, Xu Feng would carry a somewhat worn backpack and trekking poles into the back of mountains or the edge of rivers, and wash away the "smell of class" for a week by hiking again and again. In his opinion, hiking does not need all kinds of bells and whistles in the online guide, in addition to the jacket, trekking poles, backpacks and other necessities, smart watches can play a big role.
"A smart watch with trajectory navigation can solve a lot of troubles, one is that you don't have to worry about getting lost, and the other is that you can liberate your mobile phone, because many times you can use your mobile phone outdoors to take pictures while navigating, and the power will soon run out. Li Feng added to the zinc scale, "But a watch with high enough accuracy can play this role, otherwise it will be a lot of trouble." ”
People like Li Feng who have higher requirements for the professional functions of mobile phones are one category, and Zhang Xiaohan is another.
"Before I bought it, I wanted to use it to check the time, exercise, monitor sleep, and receive information, but after I bought it, the function was condensed into one: decoration. Zhang Xiaohan struggled for half a month before buying a smart watch, worried that the watch he bought would end up in the corner like other electronic products at home.
Blogger "Mo Xiaobao" shares his strap
In the end, what made her make up her mind was the decoration that smart watches can bring, after the watch arrived, Zhang Xiaohan successively purchased nearly 30 straps, according to her, different weather, dress, mood, and occasion will be matched with different straps, because of this, smart watches have also achieved the effect of making the best use of things here in Zhang Xiaohan.
On Xiaohongshu, many users refer to the smartwatch as a "beautiful waste", while also joking: "As long as you move the idea of having it, it will appear on your wrist sooner or later". It is also this group of users, in order to make the "beautiful waste" as effective as possible, constantly researching various practical small functions and collocation.
Cao Lulu bought a smart watch after "Yiyang", and the function she valued most at that time was health monitoring, and she often felt that her heart rate increased, and she hoped that the watch could help her call an ambulance as soon as possible before an emergency.
Developing the habit of wearing smart watches for more than a year, Cao Lulu is now more and more dependent on the use of the watch to record fitness, menstruation, mood and other functions, she even called the watch her "electronic nanny", "From the alarm clock to every wake-up reminder during the day, drinking water reminder, it is all done by the watch, who else can do these timely and meticulous care?"
According to the "2023 Smart Watch Industry Insights" report released by the Institute of Intelligence Research and UNISOC in collaboration with UNISOC, application functions are still the most concerned factor by consumers when purchasing, and are chosen by 76.19% of respondents. In addition, 58.98% of the respondents believe that consumers will consider the design, which exceeds the product brand perception (55.81%).
It can be seen that the difference in appearance and function makes the smart watch market segmented into more products with different positioning. Whether it's "beautiful waste" or "electronic nanny", having a label is a good thing for products and manufacturers.
How much more room can "big health+" bring?
When more and more young people have smart watches on their wrists, the heat of this industry can really be concretized.
Looking at the smart watches on the market, most of them are equipped with a variety of health monitoring functions such as heart rate monitoring, sports step counting, pressure monitoring, continuous blood oxygen saturation monitoring, breathing training, etc., and each manufacturer will come up with more comprehensive and professional health monitoring functions when launching each new model to stimulate consumers' desire to buy.
This year coincides with the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Apple Watch, and many people are looking forward to the appearance of the "Watch X", which, according to the media, may bring blood pressure monitoring and blood sugar monitoring, and if these features do make their debut this year, it will indeed be a major innovation.
Huawei, which has also been in the market for nearly a decade, came up with health monitoring functions such as hyperglycemia risk assessment research, cardiovascular risk screening, and one-click micro-physical examination when the Watch 4 series was launched. With the HUAWEI WATCH 4 series, it only takes 60 seconds to complete the monitoring and risk assessment of 10 core health data with one click, and generate a micro-physical examination report on both the watch and the app.
OPPO WATCH4PRO's "60-second physical examination" function is similar, and the sensor also monitors the degree of blood vessel elasticity, ECG electrocardiogram, heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, pressure, wrist temperature, and sleep within 60 seconds, and gives reminders and suggestions according to the temperature changes of the signs and personalized sleep.
In recent years, vivo, which has made great efforts in technology self-development, has also shown off its "muscles" on smart watches, and the "star ring" sensor layout combined with vivo's self-developed deep learning AI heart rate fusion analysis technology has built a deep neural network architecture, which has greatly improved the accuracy of heart rate and blood oxygen.
It is not difficult to see that although there are many involution directions of smart watches, "big health +" must occupy an important position, and it is also the primary position for brands to show their hard power.
However, the exploration of refined demand cannot be ignored, and the smart watch category has entered a relatively mature stage of competition in the stock market, which meets the diversified product needs of different consumers and stimulates upgrading, which tests the brand's ability to balance product functions, scenes, prices and other aspects.
The left is the fishing mode of Huami watches, and the right is the women's watch launched by Mobvoi
On April 17, the Amazfit Falcon, T-Rex Ultra, and Cheetah Pro watches launched by Huami, a Xiaomi ecological chain company, announced that they would usher in feature updates, and the highlight was the enhanced fishing mode and running mode.
"In fact, whether it is hiking, fitness, yoga or swimming, it has been explored by major brands, but the scene of fishing is indeed rarely noticed by brands. An Internet observer analyzed the zinc scale, "'Fishing guys' have always been ridiculed as a magical group, if they can be attracted through functional improvement, then the user stickiness should not be low." ”
In addition, North American brand Fitbit, for example, launched Versa for the first time in 2017 to include women's health features, which turned the company's sales woes around in one fell swoop. In China, Mobvoi TicWatchC2 has customized a variety of watch faces such as cherry blossoms, and also provides an app App specially designed for women, focusing on female users.
After years of development, smart watches have changed from chicken ribs to rigid needs, and as the IoT strategies of major manufacturers continue to increase, smart watches have played a role as a stepping stone. In the next involution, the in-depth excavation of "big health +" and scenes will also be the direction of force.
The war on the wrist is a contest everywhere
No matter how early or late the layout is, the current major manufacturers have come up with a more aggressive fighting state. At the 2024 Mobile World Congress, Huawei unveiled a series of smart wearable flagship products and revealed its determination to continue to deepen its research.
In fact, for domestic mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo, the layout of smart wearable devices is indeed an important engine to help their overseas business development. On the basis of the gradual maturity of underlying hardware innovation and the continuous enrichment of application scenarios, the user group and shipment scale of smart watches will continue to expand.
According to the "2022-2026 Smart Watch Market Status Survey and Development Prospect Analysis Report" released by China Economic Industry Information Research Network, with the transition from wrist-worn devices to watch forms, users have higher expectations for the decorative attributes of watches than bracelet products. Whether smart and light smart watches can further replace traditional watches is closely related to their appearance design and brand symbolic attributes, and it is also the key for wearable watches to break the restrictions of sports and health scenarios and further expand potential user groups.
Source: Zhongjing Zhisheng Market Research
According to Counterpoint's forecast, global smartwatch sales will increase by 16.1% and 13.0% in 2023 and 2024, respectively. TechInsights, another research institute, released a forecast that from 2023 to 2028, the average selling price of global smart watch products will decline, but the sales volume will increase steadily, which in turn will increase the revenue of global smart watches. Global smartwatch revenue is expected to grow by 7% in 2024, reaching a market size of $35 billion by 2028.
In a longer cycle, the health function of smart watches will be paid more attention and developed, and the functions for different user groups will also be more subdivided and diversified.
The competition between "Huami OV" and Apple, Samsung and other brands is not only a product competition, but also a competition of technological innovation and market strategy. Domestic manufacturers are not only striving to innovate technology and product iteration, but also expand their brand influence on a global scale.
It is worth mentioning that the development of smartphone manufacturers in the field of smart watches on the mainland is showing a synergistic effect. Although the chip strength and software ecology still need to be improved, the connection between domestic smart watches and smartphones of the same brand and the smoothness of operation have been remarkable.
In this era of globalization, the pressure from international competitors has never waned. As a portable entrance in the Internet of Things ecology, smart watches must be a battleground for soldiers, so in the fierce competition, who can move towards a new leap forward in globalization?