9 September 2014, just a little over five years ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled the Apple Watch to the world. As with some other product categories the company trades in, the smartwatch category was not one they had pioneered, but their embrace of it signalled a turning point in the sales of smartwatches around the world. 

Over the previous three decades until that point, there had been numerous efforts at technically advanced watches. An oft-quoted example is Seiko’s TV Watch, launched back in 1982; it incorporated a 1.2 inch “television” screen, and it could receive VHF and UHF channels. In 1983, it appeared in the James Bond movie Octopussy where Q presents Bond with the watch, which was connected to a video camera and could, therefore, function as a monitor, displaying whatever the video camera’s lens was pointed at. Presented with this revolutionary piece of tech, the first thing Roger Moore’s pervy Bond does is point the camera towards an unwitting female colleague and zoom in on her cleavage. Sigh.

By 1994, and a few iterations of technologically advanced watches later, Microsoft co-developed the Timex Datalink, the first watch capable of downloading data wirelessly from a computer. Five years later in 1999, Samsung had developed the first watch capable of making phone calls. However, it was the Pebble watch’s 2012 Kickstarter campaign that confirmed that the smartwatch could soon be ready to make the move from the techie niche slot and straight into prime time. 

The campaign raised a record-breaking $10.3-million (about R150-million), the highest amount that had been raised on the Kickstarter platform for any product. At the beginning of 2013, Pebble launched its first generation smartwatch and sold 400,000 units that year. By the end of 2014, the company reported over a million watches sold. 

However, they were no longer the only significant player in the still-nascent consumer smartwatch market. Samsung launched its Gear in September 2013 and according to market research firm Statista, the company had sold 1.2-million smartwatches by the end of 2014, effectively making them the market leader when it came to numbers. The total units sold that year across Pebble, Samsung, Motorola, LG and other smaller brands was 6.8-million. 

The first generation Apple watch went on sale in April 2015 and by the end of the year had sold some 12-million units, making it the new industry leader, by far. The following year, in December 2016, Pebble announced they were closing for good and its intellectual property was bought by the wearable technology company, Fitbit. Fast forward to 2019 and the market is not slowing down. Shipments grew by 44% year on year in the 2nd quarter to 12-million units, and 42% in the third quarter with a further 14-million units. Apple continues to lead, with 48% of units coming from Apple.

And here we are, smartwatches have largely been split into three primary use categories: Firstly, they continue to develop one of their earlier primary functions as an extension of the smartphone – a device where you can get notifications, make calls, access your music, make payments and access navigation apps. Secondly, they function as fitness trackers to work out your steps, calories burnt, kilometres run and so forth. And lastly, and most recently, they perform health tracking functions, checking one’s heart rate, blood pressure and much more. One could consider telling time as secondary these days, what with smartphones having taken over that task.

At CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2020, America’s largest consumer technology show, which was held from the 7-10 January, there were a lot of smartwatches on show, with incremental improvements: better battery power, better prices, new brands, hybrid models, and more health and fitness trackers, which by current indications is where manufacturers are betting their research and development money. 

In fact, just last year, on 1 November 2019, Google announced that it was buying Fitbit for $2.1-billion (R30-billion), immediately launching fears and articles about what the data giant might do with the data of the existing 28-million Fitbit users. Google already has access to a large amount of consumer data and one of the concerns is that once the company obtains consumers’ health data, it could open a way for monopolistic tendencies within the health sector.

Considering the high growth in sales, and the fact that the current iteration of the smartwatch is just shy of five years old, one could argue that the technology is in its infancy, with much more room for improvement. Apple promises that the fifth-generation Apple Watch “can indicate whether your heart rhythm shows signs of atrial fibrillation”, a condition that increases your risk of strokes, heart failure and other heart-related complications. They also claim it “can provide critical data for doctors”. If indeed, these and other promises manufacturers make about the potential to diagnose potential health problems are accurate, especially with regards to cardiovascular health and blood pressure, which are considered to be among the most prevalent causes of death, then the smartwatch could truly revolutionise human life and mortality itself. 

However, as part of daily life, worn on our wrists during the day, and next to us as we sleep at night, sensors always at work, the smartwatch is in a position to collect a large amount of data, giving companies even more data than they are already getting through our smartphones, smart homes and computers. Yvonne Jooste lays out the implications of the current levels of data collection and trading brilliantly in her review of Shoshanna Zuboff’s book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. 

Ultimately, we each have to decide for ourselves if the further exchange of our data and money for convenience, and potentially lifesaving health benefits is a fair one. At least when it comes to smartwatches, there is still a choice, that can’t be said for smartphones, which have become inseparable from 21st century daily life. Whatever your decision, smartwatches are definitely a thing, whether good or bad, and there is no shortage of options as this industry continues to explode. ML