Smartwatches, with multiple features and a stylish look, take the evolution of the watch up by many notches. Sangeeta Yadav reports
After the tablet, ipad and smartphone craze, what is making waves these days are smartwatches which you can use as a smartphone as well. You can talk, send smses, record videos, listen to music, click pictures, check mails and browse the Internet — all through your wrist watch. With all these features embedded in a smartwatch, people are waiting for tech giants like Google, Apple, Samsung and lG to launch their series of smartwatches by this yearend.
But isn’t the watch culture dying out globally and in India tooIJ With a large number of people preferring to use their phones to see time, the humble wrist watch has been sidelined as a jewel. Experts, however, tell you that all this is all set to change.
“The smartwatch goes beyond time-keeping. With a trendy look, the watch has a lot of customer appeal and it’s functions are an add-on advantage. A must-deal for many. Imagine this — You can control your smartphone by syncing it with your smartwatch! This is really cool, especially for people in the IT industry who find it amusing and worthwhile to invest in. At Watchkart, we sell around 300 to 400 watches a day and 10 per cent of them are smartwatches,” Peyush Bansal, founder and CEO, WatchKart.com, says.
According to a report by ABI Research’s Wearable Computing Technologies, smartwatches and other wearable computing devices will explode in popularity over the next year and grow to 485 million annual device shipments by 2018. It is estimated that 61 per cent of the wearable technologies market will be in the sport/activity trackers sections in 2013.
Burg, a Dutch firm, is the first company to have launched their smartwatches in India last year. Burg’s 9 to 13 series of smartwatches come with a built-in SIM tray, number keys on the circumference of the dial and a bluetooth headset.
It has front-facing camera with 3x zoom function, audio video recorder, image viewer, file manager organiser, task list, alarm clock, calculator, bluetooth capability SMS and MMS capability, phone book up to 500 numbers, call history, scratch resistance touch pad, micro SD card slot, vibrate function etc. The price ranges from Rs 9,000 to Rs 24,000.
“Smartwatches are not taking away the category of smartphones. It’s an extension to normal watches and a convenient tool to your smartphone. Burg Wristwatch mobile phones are perfectly designed and workable with dual advantage of being a wrist watch and enjoying the convenience of a mobile phone. We will be coming up with a new range of smartwatches in affordable price range soon,” Ashwini Kedia, CEO, KG Retail Ventures, and distributor of Burg smartwatches in India, says.
Sony, on the other hand, launched its SmartWatch MN2 in India at Rs 6,299 last year. It has an OlED colour display that comes with different colour straps, android compatibility that sync with your phone and lets you read SMS, email, calendar reminders as well as social networking updates from Twitter and Facebook.
“A smartwatch complements the smartphone. You can keep your phone in your pocket or bag and still do a lot more without taking it out. It’s especially useful when you are driving, eating or jogging.
Apart from the basic features, one can also download lot of applications from Google Play store for the SmartWatch. We are also working on the upgraded version that would come out soon,” spokesperson of Sony India tells you.