Despite the hype surrounding smart watches, they are unlikely to be featured on many consumers' holiday wish lists this year, according to Gartner.
Gartner says premium pricing paired with an unclear value proposition will steer consumers' spending toward tablets and fitness bands, leading to lacklustre sales of smart watches this holiday season.
Smart watches are a product subset of the wearable electronics market that caters to different industry verticals and consumer groups that include fitness, health-monitoring, monitoring the elderly, and law enforcement (tracking), it notes.
Gartner explains smart watches are not a new device but have recently evolved from the health and fitness field with an attempt to enter the mainstream consumer market by adding communication and more smart features.
"Samsung and other well-known vendors have recently entered the smart watch space, yet the products we've seen so far have been rather uninspiring in terms of design, available apps and features," says Annette Zimmermann, principal research analyst at Gartner.
"As a result, Gartner predicts that wearable devices will remain a companion to mobile phones at least through 2017, with less than 1% of premium phone users opting to replace their phone with a combination of a wearable device and a tablet."
Barriers
Gartner says there is a wide spectrum of technical specifications and capabilities in current smart watch products, such as the availability and speed of processors, display technology, type of sensors, connectivity and operating systems.
There are models that could potentially replace a smartphone entirely, as they include all technologies down to cellular connectivity, while others can perform message display, initiate voice calls and music streaming, explains Gartner.
"The convenience aspect of using a watch for interaction while leaving the larger-screen phone or tablet in the bag or pocket is something that users can relate to and probably recognise its value," said Zimmermann. "However, there are still several significant barriers to mainstream adoption, including low interest and awareness among consumers, poor design and price."
Design flaw?
Due to lack of innovative design, most smart watches have not achieved mass-market appeal, says Gartner. The majority of products that have been designed or launched so far have displays that many consumers will find "unstylish" due to their bulkiness.
Gartner notes vendors should try to find a balance between an appealing (slim) design and long battery life, as both aspects will play a significant role in consumers' purchasing decisions. Early technology adopters may not place their main emphasis on design but mainstream consumers tend to make purchase decisions based on overall appearance, material and colour, it adds.
"Users expect more than just more convenience from a new product category that claims to be innovative and priced at $200 to $300," says Zimmermann. "The same price will fund basic tablets with a good feature set. For the coming holiday season, users are more likely to pick the basic tablet option rather than a smart watch as the value proposition is clearer."
In addition, apps and interoperability across devices will be a key differentiator that will bring brand loyalty and customer engagement to those vendors investing resources in fostering the developer community.
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