Heading towards more autonomous and multiuse connected watches
Chinese manufacturer Huawei, through its Honor brand, has announced a new connected watch to come out before the end of the year, even though its own watch, presented at the MWC in Barcelona this past March, has yet to be widely commercialized outside of China. The Honor Band Zero bills itself as a cross between a watch and a connected bracelet, perhaps foreshadowing what the next generation of connected watches will resemble.
The Honor Band Zero, which can sync, for example, with the brand's new flagship Honor 7 smartphone, can record physical and sleep activity as well as receive standard notifications. With its round screen and light bracelet, this watch is practically a cross between a Withing Activité Pop and a Moto 360.
The company has yet to announce a rollout plan for the watch, but this isn't surprising considering that the Huawei Watch, which functions using Android Wear and is customizable with different dials and bracelets, is not yet widely available outside of China.
Huawei's concept, shared by many others in this nascent market, is to aim for a lighter product, a kind of hybrid between watches and connected bracelets as they are available today.
At present, a connected watch is an extension of your smartphone, equipped with a few additional sensors. In the future, they could become more autonomous, especially if they have the ability to carry their own SIM cards. This would simplify their use, and the watches would no longer need to be in the presence of a sometimes cumbersome telephone.
As far as usage goes, the connected watches of the future will have to be able to function not only as communication tools but also as remote controls for the house or car. They might even function using various operating systems, made especially for use by watches. Innovative ideas, like adding a pico projector to display alerts directly on the forearm, are also already being experimented with in order to improve their ergonomics.
Global sales of connected watches should multiply six fold this year, growing from 4 million in 2014 to 26.1 million by the end of 2015, according to the GfK market research institute.
