Gadgetory

smartwatches does the industry really know what time it is I'm Brian Cooley from CNET always in search of the next big thing to many market watchers the SmartWatch sector is still running about five minutes slow if you know what I mean we've had four major tech events CES Mobile World Congress an Apple event and Facebook f8 and none of them moved the ball forward for the SmartWatch Apple introduced some new watchbands Fitbit brought out basically a Fitbit with some very basic notifications and pebble they'd off a quarter of their staff the most encouraging headline for the SmartWatch market so far has been that smartwatches now just eclipsed the sales of Swiss made watches by about a million units that's a little bit like saying though that you sell more cars than bugatti swiss watches are a tiny sliver of the 1.2 billion unit overall watch market which smartwatches have what maybe four percent of now still many analysts guessed that the SmartWatch market will move from 30 million units sold in 2015 to about 50 million sold in 2016 not quite the magic doubling figure that many look for to see a red-hot market but substantial it could be early days for the SmartWatch in its trio phase if you will before the iPhone arrived to really throw gas on the fire or we could be at the beginning of an early sunset to be honest among the trends to look for are perhaps the idea of a slightly simpler mission for the SmartWatch that is then going to continue to focus on being a high-fashion timepiece that's a way to speak to a very large market that is already in place also the cost of admission to be in the smartphone market now clearly includes elaborate health fitness and wellness sensors on its underside Dick Tracy might be disappointed by all this but sometimes a little less a little leaner tech is the path to market adoption i'm brian coulis know what's next at cnet.com slash