For years now, companies have been claiming that wearables will be the “next big thing”. It’s 2015 and wearable devices are still niche at best. With Apple, HTC and likely many other players entering into the game this year, it’s clear that OEMs want wearables to be successful. The problem is that consumer reception is still fairly lukewarm.

For this week’s Friday Debate we talk about what it will take for smartwatches to go mainstream. What features would make you buy one? Or do you think they will always remain niche? Additionally, why do you feel the first generation of wearables (Android Wear, Gear, etc) haven’t taken off in a bigger way?

This week there wasn’t a lot of community responses, though you can check out the official forum thread to read all the responses we received. We will showcase one response this week, however, from the well known community member MasterMuffin.

I believe that smartwatches will always remain niche, or at least for a very long time. Personally, absolutely nothing realistic could make me buy a smartwatch as I don’t find anything in them that could justify spending any money whatsoever. Heck, I’m not sure if I’d use one should I get one for free! I do not represent the majority of people though, so why isn’t this new product category gathering more attention?

Part of the reason why smartwatches haven’t caught on is, of course, the one we always like to talk about: Apple. They did a smart thing by announcing their watch so early, because I’m certain it ate the sales of the others by quite a bit. There are plenty of articles that mention Apple Watch when talking about smartwatches and how we should wait and see before making any buying decisions. There’s nothing other manufacturers can do about this. Still, I wonder if even Apple can pull this off. Will their fans really buy anything with an Apple logo?

Another thing that manufacturers simply can’t do is make the hardware good. The technology needed to make a “truly” smart smartwatch just isn’t there yet, at least if you want a reasonably sized watch, and magic is unreliable. And I’m not talking about better batteries as battery life might not be an actual problem, because everyone that I’ve talked with who has a smartwatch has said that you can just charge it at night and all is fine and dandy. What I’m talking about is technology that allows for independent smartwatches with functions like those in sci-fi movies. The current smartwatches feel like feature phones on your wrist!

One feature that could help the sales is compatibility with phones with different operating systems. Samsung’s Tizen-powered watches only work with a handful of Samsung’s own devices, Android Wear only works with Android and the Apple Watch will only work with iOS. Sadly, cross-compatibility is not going to happen in a million years.

My amazing, never-before heard tips for Samsung, HTC, LG etc. are the following: design, advertise, advertise and advertise. You need to make regular folks want to use something they’ve never needed before (and something that’s 110% useless in this writer’s opinion), so the easiest solution is either to make smartwatches fashion items or just to imprint them deep into everyone’s subconsciousness. Better start working on your mind controlling techniques!

What Team AA has to say