Why wearable technology is battling an identity crisis

Wearables have been described as the next frontier of technology - the next growth category - yet, they don’t seem to be taking off. So what’s the problem?

Well, it's simple. People don’t know what a wearable is and what it is supposed to do. Engineers, marketing experts and the lay person alike suffer from this lack of understanding.

A tech company is generally looking for a new avenue to shoehorn technology. A lack of understanding of consumer fashion tastes almost often is the main cause of the downfall of a wearable. For consumers, it is more of a problem of a use case. They don’t understand why or how the product will improve their life.

A case in point is the new Apple Watch. Now, Apple went to great lengths to ensure it looked like a trendy, expensive watch, but it still doesn't have the effect that most other Apple products have on consumers. It isn’t as durable as a normal wristwatch that would cost the same - it wouldn’t even last two full days on a single charge. Instantly, its allure of being a swanky digital timepiece is gone. What remains is a fitness tracker and a hub for notifications - all of which are dependent on the phone. Compared to dedicated fitness trackers, its tracking capabilities are inferior, so it even loses on this front. That’s why the first generation Apple Watch isn’t a blockbuster hit, despite being much better than other smartwatches.

The wearables that have done well are the ones that make no pretensions about what they are. They are the ones that have opted for a less-is-more approach. I am talking about function-specific wearables like the recently launched FitBit Surge and Xiaomi Mi Band. The FitBit Surge is a rather mundane looking wristband which incorporates an e-ink monochrome display and is armed with some of the most high-tech sensors ever seen in a consumer tech product. FitBit was the company that literally created the wearable category and it proudly talks about its proprietary heart rate monitor, which is always active and far more accurate than sensors found on most wearables, including the Apple Watch. It has an easy-to-use interface for a wealth of fitness-related activities and also shows time.

The kicker is that it has a kickass battery life of more than a week. This was possible because FitBit decided to offer a better user experience of the e-ink display over the glitz that comes with a colour OLED display - now a colour display is great but on a tiny device, it drains too much power.

The Surge is expensive at Rs 19,990, but still cheaper than most Apple Watches and is a darn good fitness tracker when combined with its detailed app for the iPhone and Android. It is the best at tracking your daily activities.

The Mi Band on the other side of the spectrum has quickly become the world’s best-selling wearable. How? Well, it costs just Rs 999 and yet it manages to do a decent job of tracking one’s daily activities.

And the upside is not its price or barebones design, but the 30-day battery life, which too, on many occasions is known to last well beyond 40 days.

Moral of the story: Wearables that don’t try to mimic analogue objects will hold the key to the future of the category. Objects that try to provide the best of both worlds will likely continue to fail in the near future. If anything, one shouldn't look beyond Microsoft's HoloLens technology. It isn't pretending to be like anything we have seen before - including the Google Glass.