In 2024, can smart watches say goodbye to “beautiful waste”?

When searching for "beautiful waste" on social media, smart watches always rank at the top. They are expensive, have little practical value except for their superficial "beauty", but have great emotional value, and are the "digital desserts" that young people today use to please themselves.

At first glance, "beautiful waste" seems to be a derogatory term. But if you think about it carefully, "beautiful waste" is simply the highest compliment for a final product.

The fact that potential consumers can’t stop buying smart watches, racking their brains to find discounts and spending real money on impulse shows that the premium of smart watches beyond functionality is being recognized by the market and cannot be replaced by many “cost-effective products”, “national watches” and “practical products”.

As the public's willingness to consume smartphones becomes weak and the replacement cycle continues to lengthen, smart wearable IoT devices have become the latest focus of major terminal manufacturers.

As 2023 is coming to an end, the smartwatch market has also "rolled" a new look. Apple Watch SE9 once again demonstrated Apple's product strength in integrating "intelligence + fashion". Huawei launched the "Extraordinary Master" endorsed by Andy Lau this year, which is full of cutting-edge materials, Beidou satellites, micro-physical examinations and other technological buffs. The smartwatches just released by vivo and Xiaomi are both equipped with their own self-developed Blue River BlueOS smart operating system and Pengpai OS for the first time. OPPO's flagship smartwatch OPPO Watch 4 Pro is called the "Android Watch King" by many users.

It is not difficult to foresee that next year's smartwatch market will see a more intense "fight between dragon and tiger". From "beautiful waste" to "beautiful good", in which direction will smartwatches go next?

Beautiful waste is not necessarily a bad thing

The so-called “beautiful waste” shows that the hardware of smart watches is mature, but the software needs to be improved.

In terms of hardware, smart technology and fashion items converge.

In the past decade, smart watches have flourished, and the three mainstream directions of hardware innovation are smart technology watches represented by Apple Watch and HUAWEI Watch, fashion watches represented by Moto 360 and Fossil, and hardcore sports watches represented by Fitbit and Garmin.

In recent years, smart terminal manufacturers have been constantly innovating in design, components, and industrial chains, and are no longer inferior to fashion brands in terms of fashion. Apple Watch optimizes the strap to take into account wearing comfort, sensor sensitivity, and clothing matching needs. Huawei Watch has in-depth cooperation with supply chain partners. The "Extraordinary Master" uses nanotechnology to integrate the antenna into a highly integrated watch box. The liquid metal process gives the smart watch an exquisite appearance that high-net-worth individuals value.

In general, the smart watch products of technology manufacturers have gradually accumulated extremely high product engineering capabilities, and can now introduce the exquisite aesthetics of traditional watches into smart wearable devices.

As partners in the supply chain grow and mature, the price costs of advanced technologies and new materials continue to fall. In 2023, Xiaomi and vivo launched price-friendly "national-level watches", which are expected to bring this beauty to every consumer's wrist.

At the same time, it must be admitted that the software capabilities of smart watches are not convincing enough.

Specifically, only smart watches from top brands can rely on their brand influence to get users to buy them, regardless of whether they are compatible with smartphones, headphones, or other products, and are not affected by "cost-effective products" or "low-priced substitutes." Terminal manufacturers with insufficient brand power will find that they cannot attract smart watches with only existing smartphone users.

Although the software is "useless", the hardware is so beautiful that consumers "love and hate" it.

In this case, improving the software level and thus improving the overall experience of smart watches is not only a difficult problem for leading brands to "turn waste into treasure", but also a highlight for second- and third-tier watch brands to break the deadlock.

Advanced point 1: From sports data monitoring to scientific health management

Do consumers have any distrust of wearable devices? A professor from the PLA General Hospital raised this question at a digital health salon.

Motion data monitoring is a basic function that almost all smart wearable devices have, but the collected motion data is "dead", cannot be used, and cannot be analyzed, which was the "useless" point of the previous round of wearable devices.

Through research, the professor found that the wearable health monitoring equipment and data are credible, but there are "traps" when interpreting the data and conclusions. These traps include: whether the equipment manufacturers use the same standards; the accuracy and reliability of the data itself; how to reasonably interpret the correspondence between the data and health characteristics.

Health monitoring based on rigorous scientific research is the core competitiveness of leading smartwatch manufacturers. There are two competitive points:

One is quality.

Whether the data collected by smart watches and the health management capabilities they provide have scientific explanations, are qualified as medical devices, and can really help users effectively conduct health interventions directly determines the quality of health services provided by smart watches.

Traditional smart watches, first of all, cannot monitor, and do not have the corresponding sensors integrated. For example, up to 40% of patients with atrial fibrillation have no symptoms, and can only be diagnosed by going to the hospital for an electrocardiogram, and the rate of missed diagnosis is very high. Therefore, the health value of monitoring through smart watches is very large. At present, Apple and Huawei have already provided the ability to screen for atrial fibrillation on their own watches, which can identify and track the early risks of atrial fibrillation and promptly correct the abnormal behavior and lifestyle of people at risk.

Secondly, it cannot be explained. For example, when a smartwatch detects an increased heart rate, there may be many reasons behind it, such as anxiety, dehydration, anemia, lung infection, and even pregnancy. In the past, smartwatches could only give users data, but could not understand the principles behind it and give relatively accurate health advice.

At present, digital health capabilities based on scientific research are increasing. For example, the updated "Guidelines for the Prevention and Treatment of Hypertension in China" in 2023 will push professional wearable products into the sequence recognized by medical experts. A study published in "Nature Medicine" showed that the PPG signals (photoplethysmography) of the index fingers of 60,000 subjects were collected, and then AI deep learning was used to analyze whether the user had diabetes. The sensitivity and specificity reported by the model were 65.4% and 75.0% respectively, indicating that it is feasible to identify diabetes by collecting wrist vascular PPG signals through smart watches.

To sum up, this type of effective health monitoring based on rigorous scientific research, high quality and high returns enables smart watches to maintain their fashion attributes while also possessing professional capabilities, revitalizing the vitality of the product and becoming the "standard configuration" for many middle-aged and elderly people and high-risk young people.

The second is quantity.

There are many types of wearable devices that can provide health monitoring, but the number of effective functions integrated into a device directly determines the product's value.

For example, some TWS earphones can also provide body temperature monitoring function, but that's all. There is a large overlap in functions with smart watches, and they can be easily replaced. Some terminal manufacturers have not invested enough in digital health, and the accumulated data and algorithms are limited, so they can only provide relatively few hardcore health monitoring functions, which is not enough for the "polygon warriors".

Among them, Apple and Huawei both have a lot of advanced health management capabilities. Apple Watch and iPhone currently provide functions focused on 17 areas of health and fitness, from heart health and sleep to mobility and women's health. In addition, Apple supports patients in more than 10,000 locations and more than 800 medical institutions to use Apple Health Records as available medical data.

The "micro-physical examination" of the Huawei WATCH 4 series has also been widely recognized by consumers. Its core capability is "one watch, 60 seconds, and one test of ten indicators", which is much more efficient and portable than traditional health examinations. It is not easy to dispatch 8 sets of algorithms and 5 sensors within 60 seconds, complete multi-modal testing, and give health advice based on professional theoretical foundations.

At HDC 2023, I saw a media person experience the "cough sound detection lung infection" function, which seemed to open the door to a new world.

In general, health is the strongest and most lasting driving force for consumers to buy, and artificial intelligence, as a new software technology, allows smartwatch manufacturers to regain the value of data and provide users with professional health solutions. Therefore, smartwatches also have the real potential to leverage the big health industry.

Advanced point 2: From an “extension” of the mobile phone to a key to the interaction of all things