Smartwatch war feels like a tape loop

THE burgeoning industry of smartwatches has taken a fascinating turn that tells us much about the way personal technology is bought, sold and used. And the most surprising discovery is that nothing has changed in 30 years.

To understand what is happening in the smartwatch war today, it is useful to look at a case study that became a cliché: the VHS versus Betamax video cassette war that began in the 1970s. Sony’s Betamax was regarded by many as superior to JVC’s VHS, but the latter allowed any manufacturer to use the standard, much like Google’s approach to Android today.

Sheer marketing momentum allowed a supposedly “inferior” technology to triumph. However, VHS represented a superior value proposition to Betamax in that there was a far wider choice of machines that could play it, and therefore more competitive pricing. In other words, the VHS ecosystem, rather

❛ The Galaxy Gear is a dead device when it is disconnected. It cannot even tell the time

than its technology, was superior.

This week, Samsung announced it had shipped 800 000 units of its Galaxy Gear smartwatch, which was released just two months ago. This is in a global market that had been forecast, by ABI Research, to amount to a total of 1.2-million units this year. Last year, the market amounted to 330 000 and was dominated by Sony’s SmartWatch.

The SmartWatch 2 and the Galaxy Gear were launched in the same week in September and, although numbers are not available from Sony yet, it appears that Samsung is already leading the race.

This is surprising in itself, given that the Gear is compatible only with three Samsung devices: the Note 10.1 tablet, the Note 3.0 phonetablet and, as of this week, the Galaxy S4 smartphone.

The Sony SmartWatch 2 works best with a Sony Xperia Z1 phone, but it can be used with any Android phone. It is as if Sony has finally learnt the Betamax lesson.

The Sony version has one other significant advantage: it can show you the time when it is not connected to a smartphone.

The Galaxy Gear becomes a dead device the moment it disconnects from its Note or Galaxy parent. It cannot even tell the time. This is such a fundamental flaw that the phone should not even have left the starting line in this race.

But clever marketing, by positioning it as a companion device to the Note 3.0 — a wildly popular phone-tablet that has already sold more than five million units in the past two months — is winning the day for the Gear. That, and a seemingly unlimited marketing budget, of course.

After several weeks of using both smartwatches, there is little doubt that the Sony device is more practical and is the better watch. Someone even described it as elegant when I selected a classicstyle watch face from the options. I had never heard that word applied to any of the myriad calculator and computer watches that have been foisted on the world over the years.

The Galaxy Gear can do far more — when connected. But you need a highly specific companion device, and the price tag of the package deal will put it out of reach of most South Africans. For those who bought an Android phone in the past year and want a smartwatch to go with it, the Galaxy Gear will not even be in their frame of reference.

They may consider one of the many independent options, such as the much hyped Pebble smartwatch, but they will not find many of those in local stores.

At the same time, for Samsung, this is only Round One of the smartphone war.

In 2014, expect the market to explode with choice.

Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter on @art2gee