The Android smart watch’s time may not yet have come: Despite heavy promotion of Android Wear, Google’s hardware partners, including LG Electronics, Motorola Mobility and Samsung Electronics, only shipped 720,000 of the devices last year.
With the arrival of products such as Motorola’s hotly anticipated Moto 360, the smartwatch market was expected to take off. But the data from market research company Canalys shows that consumers are still far from convinced that they need buy one.
“Android Wear will need to improve significantly in the future, and we believe it will do so,” said Daniel Matte, analyst at Canalys.
When Apple unveiled its watch last fall, the company showed only demo models of the new device — polished prototypes of the hardware running nonworking loops of the software.
On Monday, the company gave a closer look at the Apple Watch, including the working software. The company also said the device would start at $350 and, depending on the band and finish you chose, go into the thousands of dollars. I spent two long sessions with the watch in Apple’s demo room. Here are my first impressions.
THE HARDWARE It’s a perfectly nice-looking watch. In its higher-end configurations — for instance, the stainless steel middle tier, with the steel-mesh Milanese loop wristband, which starts at $650 — the Apple Watch comes close to being beautiful, and it is certainly one of the best-looking computers you can buy for your wrist.