The elephant in the article is that he mentions Garmin, as a major player, then nearly completely ignores it. The industry isn't an Apple Watch industry, it's Apple/Samsung accessory on one side, and true fitness watch on the other.
As a Garmin user (Fenix 3 HR), I find it indispensable on my rides, swims, runs, etc. Nothing works better with the same battery life and integration. The notifications are kinda nice, but honestly the fitness part of it matters far more.
Apple clearly has been moving in the fitness watch direction, but it's unlikely they'll get the same performance because they're unwilling to sacrifice svelte design (dedicated altimeter, GPS, temperature, extra radios plus long-life battery take more space). Even in the current watch they have about 1/3 the battery life using GPS. Of course that's fine for a lot of people, but there's a healthy number who want more.
I think the final layout will be Apple/Samsung with a large majority of the market, and sports specialists (Garmin) having the rest, but that segment being quite strong and healthy over the long term. Where that leaves Fitbit, I don't know. They don't have a model that meets the needs of someone who wants a Garmin (though Garmin is expanding down into their space), and they'll never have the integration the "cool-accessory" market wants.
Disclaimer: I work for Garmin, but not on smart watches.
This is exactly what I came here to say. On top of that I'm not sure how the data from the second chart got put together? It just says that the data came from their own site and IDC. IDC's report for the 3rd quarter puts three competitors above Apple in terms of market share, YOY growth, and unit sales.[1]
"Xiaomi's new Mi Band includes heart rate tracking and is priced well below any competition, making it more suitable for impulse buying than any other fitness band. Despite its worldwide growth in 3Q16, the company managed to lose market share as almost every other vendor outpaced its growth. Xiaomi, across all business lines, continues to struggle to gain any significant traction outside its home country of China."
Problem with Xiaomi have been more supply side than demand side. I know because I tried to buy MiBand 2 when it originally came out and for weeks most vendors were sold out. It's possible that Xiaomi is having trouble keeping up the manufacturing volumes at the low price point they've entered the market.
I agree with that. Garmin has been improving their execution lately - they are aggressively targeting their competitors on both features and price, while retaining their core feature strengths. I think they have a great future, especially if they continue to beef up their engineering teams (and don't disruptively ask them to move!), and maybe continue with new features/markets like satellite data. My Garmin watch is a lot more compelling than an Apple watch - long battery life, does not require a smartphone, always on sunlight-readable display, well thought-out workout tracking features.
But for 'normal' fitness people the Apple watch is a pretty strong value. It's much better than a basic FitBit but works better. It integrates with your phone very well and the notification handling quickly became my favorite feature.
I think the Apple watch is far more than good enough for most people's fitness needs, and I don't think Garmin's strength there will be enough to elevate them out of the niche of hard-core fitness people.
For normal fitness people, I would think an iPhone would be more than enough for your needs. Get an iPhone strap or carry it on your hand. There's really no need to have a watch.
On the other hand, if you are planning for something serious, like running a half-marathon in spring, or doing interval training, then you begin to need heart rate monitoring. Many then discovers that the Apple Watch HRM is cr*p (mine read 215bpm which is at least 25bpm more than my biological max) and you can't really use Apple Watches for fitness. Apple would need to invest massively in heart rate monitoring technology (+battery) to get any interest from fitness crowds.
One are that makes sense for Apple Watch is simple activity tracking. How many steps, how many floors climbed. Where you have been. How much sleep you had etc. Those are important metrics for your health and worth the price. But at the same time, you can get a Fitbit or a Vivoactive for $150 less
> On the other hand, if you are planning for something serious, like running a half-marathon in spring
For the encouragement of would-be or newbie runners, it is of course entirely possible to run a half-marathon distance without any form of monitoring, diagnostic or tracking equipment.
Invest in good shoes first and don't worry about gadgets. The only one I'd recommend would be a small mobile phone in a back-pocket in case of emergency if you're running cross-country or remote roads.
The watch has two primary benefits over the phone: it can track your fitness when you don't have your phone if you don't want to carry it, and it can track your heart rate which makes it far more accurate at figuring out your calorie burn.
In response to your comments on the HRM in an Apple smart watch, that hasn't been my experience. It seems to work quite well, and articles I've seen say that compares surprisingly well to a chest strap or something like that. I will say that it is HIGHLY dependent on having a good fit. The band that came with my watch cost me a lot of problems, when I got one it was more adjustable it got a lot better.
I'd say an Apple Watch is a quite a few steps up from a basic fit bit, and it doesn't compare to a high-end Garmin, but I think it's more than enough for most people in the market.
The Apple Watch is "ok" for running. Especially with the sports rubber band.
Activity tracking like walking or cooking, gardening will also show good to excellent readings.
But you should try it in cycling on roads. Pebble stones, bumps, traffic, sudden stops. Readings are inaccurate, especially if you are reading fast (!= commuting)
The worst inaccuracies I saw was in martial arts and bootcamps. Those are when you move your hands in unpredictable speed and directions. I think readings would also be quite inaccurate in most racquet sports. I'm not sure I have seen any reviews about the Apple Watch in these conditions.
Completely agree. I used to be a dedicated Fitbit and more recently Vivoactive wearer and after just switching to using the iPhone plus some apps like Jawbone for sleep tracking I find the value-add of the low-end fitness 'watches' to be completely replaced by the iPhone's built in capabilities. I do plan on buying a Fenix when the next model rev comes out to use when in the mountains and I don't want to rely on a smartphone or wear my automatic watch, but I'd be very concerned if I was Fitbit.
> mine read 215bpm which is at least 25bpm more than my biological max
How did you learn that max? One of the things I learned training for some events was that most people thought their max was much lower than it actually was — not just due using those crude age-based formulas but also things like trying to measure it too early or late in a workout, without the right level of warm-up, etc. A fair number of people had been holding back too much because they thought their max was lower than it actually was.
Agreed. I do jealously look at my Apple watch friends for things like locking/unlocking the laptop by proximity, no chance Garmin or FitBit gets that kind of functionality. And re. fitness, if you don't go out and use GPS for more than an hour or two, then yeah Apple Watch is the perfect fit.
That said, coming at it from the other side, I think the Garmin smart watch features are good enough for many, many people.
Thing is, these are bloody expensive devices. I'd never buy both, but then again, maybe if you can afford one, you can afford two?
I work for Fitbit. I don't generally talk about what I do and don't know about future features, but I'll make a one-time exception and tell you I'm completely ignorant as to whether there's any plan for laptop lock/unlock.
Despite my complete ignorance, I'll still challenge your statement "no chance Garmin or Fitbit gets that kind of functionality." If Fitbit Blaze can do bluetooth music control it doesn't take much imagination to think lock/unlock.
Bluetooth music control it's a relatively standard part of Bluetooth. Normal headphones can do that, I'm guessing it's not too hard to do that. At a minimum your device could send a message over Bluetooth to your app on the phone which could do the adjustment us No standard platform APIs.
Unlocking a computer has two different problems.
First, you have the basic problem of access. Only Apple has the rights necessary to make something that can unlock a Mac. You may be able to do this in the windows world, but I don't think anyone else can accomplish it on the Mac.
The second is the issue of security. When Apple created this feature they explained that they were using time of flight information from the two devices to be able to figure out when they were close enough to unlock. They claim this is only possible because they control both sides in the firmware on both devices.
It's very easy to know if something is in range. And I'm sure there's a way to get some sort of signal strength. But how do you know if someone is using a signal booster? How do you know what "close" is? If you're dealing with random computers from different manufacturers then how do you calibrate with the correct "closeness" value is for each one? Even if there's a very good way to do that, do you have the resources? And to keep that database updated as new computers come out?
I've been using the feature on my personal Mac and you do have to be VERY close. It won't work from a couple feet away, even though Bluetooth will work form a much much longer distance.
That really is one of those little things that Apple is able to do because they have such tight control of everything. Even in the PC world, I would think it would be hard for someone like Microsoft to do on anything other than the surface computers that they build.
(It occurs to me that I'm thinking of doing it automatically. Just like the music controls, you could always have an app on the computer listening for a special message sent over Bluetooth when someone tap the button on the watch that would unlock the computer. But that's not as convenient or secure)
I remember people making apps to let you do it on Macs years ago with an iPhone, but I don't know how much of a hack they were or how secure. MacOS has gotten more secure in the mean time so I'm not sure if it would still be possible.
The Garmin features are fine, but they'll never be as tightly integrated as an Apple Watch or Android Wear device (assuming it isn't running Android Wear), and you have all the other things to think about (the large band market for Apple, general preferences in looks, etc).
Makes me think it will be hard for Garmin to break into the mainstream.
That's something a lot of people use as an example, but in practice I don't find it to be a problem at all. I only had to charge my FitBit every week or two, but I don't mind what I do with my watch at all.
I plug my phone in every night, and I put my watch on its charger at the same time. That takes care of it, no need to think about it any further. The first generation Apple Watch would usually have 40 to 50% battery left when I put it on its charger at the end of the day. I'm not sure about the newer one, but I know the battery life is supposed to be better.
The FitBit could go for 10 days, but I would have to monitor it (usually wait for the app to tell me) and then go find the charger and plug it in. Oddly the fact that I charge my watch every night seems like less of a cognitive burden to me because I don't actually have to think about it. I did occasionally have to think about my FitBit.
So in practice, it's never been an issue. Because the battery is so small (due to the size of the device) even if you do run it down it charges up very fast. I know some people use them all day and sleep track with them, and then simply charge them up while taking a shower in the morning.
If you want to spend all day doing a triathlon and having GPS tracking then maybe the Apple Watch is battery wouldn't be good enough for a single day. I imagine that some company sells a gadget that would be able to handle that. The Apple Watch is battery is WAY bigger than my needs, and I imagine it sized for a lot of people. Health is turned out to be one of the biggest uses of the Apple Watch.
I think this is something like range anxiety and cars. It certainly affect some people, but for your average user and even your average user who likes to stay fit and exercise a fair bit I don't think it's an issue. It's only the most demanding and serious 5 to 10% of the market that may not be able to use an Apple Watch.
The only place I ever saw a benefit to the battery life with my FitBit was when traveling: since I don't tend to take very long trips I almost always could get by without bringing the charger. I have to bring my Apple Watch charger. Since I don't travel much, that doesn't matter much to me.
> The FitBit could go for 10 days, but I would have to monitor it (usually wait for the app to tell me) and then go find the charger and plug it in. Oddly the fact that I charge my watch every night seems like less of a cognitive burden to me because I don't actually have to think about it.
I can agree that the fitbit is a little more fiddly in that regard, I sometimes get surprised when my charge is low. But one of the things that I love about the fitbit is that I can track my sleep - and I cannot do that if I've taken it off overnight to charge.
I guess different people use their watches for different things. For me I like the step-tracking, love the heart-rate monitoring (when rock-climbing, lifting weights, or cycling), and adore the sleep tracking.
I only have a single complaint, and that is that the thing isn't waterproof. If I could go swimming with it on I'd be a complete satisfied user.
People do sleep tracking with the Apple Watch, it doesn't take very long to charge at all. I don't, but I know people who just charge it up once or twice a day and wear it all day and night.
I bought an Apple Watch 2 with hopes of it being a good enough running watch at least for casual runs (an upgrade to my 310xt). Instead I returned it and got a Fenix 3. Bring on the ultras.
As a Garmin user (Fenix 3 HR), I find it indispensable on my rides, swims, runs, etc. Nothing works better with the same battery life and integration. The notifications are kinda nice, but honestly the fitness part of it matters far more.
Apple clearly has been moving in the fitness watch direction, but it's unlikely they'll get the same performance because they're unwilling to sacrifice svelte design (dedicated altimeter, GPS, temperature, extra radios plus long-life battery take more space). Even in the current watch they have about 1/3 the battery life using GPS. Of course that's fine for a lot of people, but there's a healthy number who want more.
I think the final layout will be Apple/Samsung with a large majority of the market, and sports specialists (Garmin) having the rest, but that segment being quite strong and healthy over the long term. Where that leaves Fitbit, I don't know. They don't have a model that meets the needs of someone who wants a Garmin (though Garmin is expanding down into their space), and they'll never have the integration the "cool-accessory" market wants.