LAS VEGAS—The trickle of companies putting computing and communications power on people’s wrists has turned into a torrent, making it tough for small and newer suppliers to stand out in the crowd.
So-called smartwatches are popping up all over the Consumer Electronics Show here this week, with new or recently introduced products from Pebble Technology Corp., Kreyos Inc., Qualcomm Inc., Archos SA, PH Technical Labs Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.
“There will be a lot of people jumping into the market,” said Patricia Roché, senior vice president of marketing and sales at Kreyos, whose $170 Meteor watch begins shipping this month. “Smartwatches are exciting and fun, and people have a lot of different ideas” on how to exploit the technology, she added.
One example is Pebble, an early trendsetter in the emerging market that is betting on a style upgrade. The Palo Alto, Calif., startup on Monday disclosed plans for a $249 watch made from stainless steel to complement its original plastic design.
For those hoping to stand out, however, there is a problem: there is very little functional difference between the products.
The latest smartwatches are essentially wearable companions to smartphones, which serve as their portal to the Internet. Most of them have a processor chip, a collection of sensors and a display that shows roughly the same kinds of information—text messages, notifications about emails, weather or other events.
Smartwatches, for example, can allow users to sidestep the need to pull out a smartphone to watch for important messages—a practice sometimes considered rude in meetings. But users still have to carry their phones, and constantly looking at one’s watch isn’t a lot more polite, some industry executives say.
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(Published Jan. 6, 2014, in The Wall Street Journal.)