This week, wearable technology became huge with Google’s announcement of Android Wear, the operating system that will run wearables; however, for now, lights are on the smartwatch. Along with that, Motorola unveiled the Moto 360 and LG silently did so too with the G Watch.
Smartwatches have been slowly gaining traction for a few months now; Razer jumped in with the Nabu wristband, Samsung caught our attentions with the Gear Fit, Pebble has already sold 400,000 smartwatches and there’s a lot more. So far, in the Philippines, we’re not yet getting a good idea of the smartwatch’s market potential; some of the popular ones found locally are the first Galaxy Gear and the Sony Smartwatch – both of which are devices people are still hesitant to buy. Then there’s the Cherry Mobile G1 watchphone that caught a lot of Filipino’s eyes because of its functions and price, but that’s not really a smartwatch.
When you are presented with a beautiful device that wraps around your wrist, acts as an extension of your smartphone, gets your notifications and gives you the information that you need without looking weird (plus a few new features, waterproofing or whatnot), how much would you pay for it? Pebble’s smartwatches are selling for $149 to $249 in the US while Samsung’s Gear Fit and Gear 2 are at around $199 and $299; that’s playing in the range of Php6,500 to Php13,500; with that said, there’s a great possibility that this year’s upcoming smartwatches will be priced similarly when launched.
When the storm comes, are you willing to pay that price? Feel free to leave your answers, comments and opinions in the section down below.
Php 2,500 would be fine. there are local phones that you can buy for 3K-6K with great specs, so i think smartwatches should be priced lower than that in the Phil market. hope local brands will make wearable tech soon.
for high-end brands, Php 5,000K tops, coz investment-wise, tech changes so fast, you might want to change it after 1yr or 3 max (like the way you change your watches, or maybe buy one for casual wear and another for formal events).
features should include the established features for a normal watch, being durable, waterproof, scratch proof and dust proof, and since it is a smartwatch, it should, of course have the connectivity feature, time, date and alarm, maybe LED light and of course long battery life (maybe we can go back to the coin-battery concept and not charging everything every single day – waste of time).
and the other features would be the “premium” that you pay for such as Screen for display, type of glass and display (corning or gorilla, IPS, MALI or whatever type they come up with next) heart rate monitor, GPS, pedometer, wave monitor (for surfing) messaging, camera, call function, “deep sleep” monitor, blood pressure monitor, calorie counter, “siri” function etc.