Domestic smart watches: groping in the dark

"We have clearly realized that smart watches are a huge market that has the power to completely subvert the traditional watch industry, but we have not yet found a clear direction." At an industry summit in Beijing, a Shenzhen manufacturer manager said helplessly.

In the past two years, as Internet companies began to advance into traditional industries, industries such as mobile phones, televisions, and even taxis have been profoundly transformed by the Internet, and watches are no exception.

In just a few months, more than 200 smart watches were put on sale on JD.com . " In Shenzhen, there are at least 50 companies making smart watches. Together with companies in other cities, the total number of companies in this industry exceeds 200." The above-mentioned person in charge revealed that in addition to Internet startups, traditional watch manufacturers have also begun to enter the market to avoid the risk of being subverted.

However, the market has not yet opened, but the controversy over the direction has already begun. Should it be a mobile phone accessory or an independent full-featured smart watch? Should it compete in a niche industry or dominate the market with one model? Under the dual restrictions of screen and battery, domestic manufacturers are exerting their greatest creativity to try to stand out and set an industry benchmark.

Without successful examples, typical products or unified standards, the domestic smart watch industry is on the dark eve of confusion.

Tuman Crisis

Tuman Technology is one of the earliest startups to enter the smartwatch field. It started planning smartwatch products in March 2012. "We didn't think about any direction at the time. We just wanted to make smartwatches an effective supplement to mobile phones," recalled Wang Wei, founder of Tuman Technology. "At that time, we used Freescale chips. Since Android was not supported, we made a small OS based on Linux. As a result, many system problems occurred. We worked on it for 8 months but failed."

In July 2013, during a discussion with angel investors, Wang Wei mentioned the smartwatch plan again and showed the design drawings at the time. Investors including Wang Feng, the founder of Linekong, were very interested. Tuman Technology received a round of financing, and Wang Wei decided to focus on making watches.

In September, Wang Feng accidentally leaked the concept map of Tuman on WeChat, which unexpectedly attracted great attention from WeChat friends. "At that time, we started to take reservations in a rush. In just over ten hours, the number of reservations exceeded 20,000, and the proportion of paying users was also very high, far exceeding our expectations."

In just one day, Toman seemed to have become a dark horse in the smartwatch field. Driven by so many users, Wang Wei had to really invest in design and manufacturing. "So many users made reservations and paid in full, forcing us to develop the product within two months. Although we had eight months of experience, the operating system was different, which made it very difficult."

According to Wang Wei's plan, the most unique feature of Tuman smartwatch is the e-ink screen, which is the first company in China to use this screen for smartwatches. "The price of e-ink screen is six times that of ordinary color screen," Wang Wei said. Although it is black and white, its reflectivity and contrast are great, and the display effect is close to that of printed matter. It can be seen clearly even under strong light, and it is not easy for eyes to get tired when reading.

More importantly, e-ink only consumes electricity when the screen is refreshed, which is more power-efficient than ordinary screens. This is a huge advantage in smart watches where every inch of space is valuable. It means that Tuman can use smaller and lighter batteries, as well as a thinner design.

However, the reality was much more cruel than expected. Tuman's first batch of products quickly suffered a Waterloo after they were shipped. Due to hasty manufacturing, the first batch of products had a lot of problems, frequent errors, poor power consumption, and many users demanded a refund.

"Users' expectations were too high. They wished China would have an Apple right away. Unfortunately, we didn't make our products amazing. This is a valuable lesson we learned from starting a business," said Wang Wei.

After this lesson, Wang Wei began to calm down and rethink the positioning of smart watches. He believes that the three features of smart watches, namely close fit, quick reminders and fast operations, are their greatest advantages, and Tuman’s products should also revolve around these three core demands.

In the second generation of products, Wang Wei insisted on using the e-ink screen. He believed that the watch should be able to show the time by raising the hand, rather than displaying the time through somatosensory or by pressing a button. Somatosensory often has inaccurate monitoring. If you look at the watch 100 times and it fails to show the time 5-6 times, the experience will be greatly reduced. Therefore, Tuman insisted on using the e-ink screen in the next generation of products.

In addition, the built-in bus card chip is also a major feature of Tuman. It is reported that the next generation of products will support Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. When using it, just bring the buckle part close to the card reader, and recharge and swipe the card like a special-shaped bus card, which gives users another hard demand for using smart watches. At present, Tuman is communicating with government departments and is expected to be launched early next year.

Wang Wei believes that due to the limitations of screens and batteries, smart watches will not be able to replace mobile phones for a long time in the future, unless holographic screens and better batteries are available. "A full-function watch with a SIM card must be equipped with a baseband chip, which needs to constantly search for signals and must be equipped with a battery of more than 400 mAh, which means that the size of the watch will be very large, affecting the user experience."

"We often have wild ideas about whether it is possible to separate the battery and baseband chip module from the watch. For example, we can install the baseband module and battery in your shoes, so that the shoes and watches can communicate with each other to realize the phone function. We are exploring these directions," said Wang Wei.

inWatch: A full-featured watch pathfinder

InWatch from Yingqu Technology is what Wang Wei calls a "watch with a SIM card insertable in it." In the view of Wang Xiaobin, the founder of inWatch, in 3-5 years, smart watches will definitely be an independent device, not just an accessory to mobile phones. Currently, accessory-type smart watches from Samsung, LG, and Motorola are all transitional products.

The so-called accessory-type smart watches refer to watches that do not have independent communication modules and rely on Bluetooth or Wifi to connect to mobile phones or home networks to achieve various functions. Samsung's Gear, LG's G Watch and Motorola's MOTO360 are all of this type, which is also the common choice of most domestic manufacturers.

Originated from Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen, inWatch was originally three companies, namely hardware, software outsourcing and design companies. In 2012, Wang Xiaobin founded this smart watch company with more than 70 employees.

Initially, he had considered making a smart bracelet, but after careful consideration, he believed that the bracelet was just a transitional product. On the one hand, domestic copycat brands have been competing on low prices, and on the other hand, as a domestic manufacturer, it is difficult to compete with foreign brands.

"The demand for wristbands is too weak. They only solve the problem of personal information digitization and realize monitoring functions such as pedometer. This leads to many users putting the wristbands aside after a few months of purchase." Wang Xiaobin gave up this direction and focused on smart watches with richer gameplay.

"A watch must be an independent device with independent computing and communication capabilities, but the computing power does not need to be too strong. The watch is just a terminal, and the real computing should be done in the cloud," said Wang Xiaobin.

inWatch has currently launched two products and is one of the few companies in China that actually has products on sale. The inWatch One C is priced at 1,399 yuan and the inWatch Z is priced at 1,788 yuan.

In terms of configuration, inWatch can be described as luxurious. Taking the z series as an example, it is not only equipped with a dual-core CPU and a SIM card slot, but also equipped with a 5-megapixel camera, bone conduction headphones, a ceramic back cover, etc.

Wang Xiaobin introduced that this is the first time in China that bone conduction headphones are used in smart watches. Users can make normal calls by simply putting the buckle close to their ears. If the watch is placed on the table, a hands-free effect can be achieved through resonance.

However, many users reported to Sina Technology that the inWatch's user experience is average, and the main disadvantage is that the watch is too thick. "If you wear a shirt, you can't button your cuffs." To support the above powerful hardware, the inWatch is equipped with a 580 mAh battery, which is almost the highest among all mobile phones on sale.

In addition, due to the limitation of the screen, it is also a common problem for smart watches to input information. After receiving a text message on the inWatch, it is difficult for users to type in the content to reply. Wang Xiaobin admitted that inputting on watches is a global problem. Currently, there is almost only one solution, which is voice. In the Android Wear system just released by Google (576.08, 4.99, 0.87%), voice is also used as the most important interaction method, but this interaction experience is indeed not perfect.

Even so, in the eyes of many users, inWatch is the most powerful product on sale in China in terms of both function and workmanship. "It is not easy for a domestic manufacturer to make a smartwatch to this level, which is beyond my expectation," said a senior user.

After using many smartwatch brands in the industry, he believes that smartwatches should return to their essence and do everything related to the core function of "time". "I have bought many smartwatches, but most of them can't even do the most basic function of time."

"Precise timekeeping, automatic time synchronization, automatic switching of world time zones, conversion calculations between the Gregorian and lunar calendars, custom calendars, countdown and forward timing, timing analysis and storage. If a smart watch can't even do all these functions, can it still be called a smart watch?" the user questioned.

Guodong: How do traditional watch manufacturers transform?

The user's doubts coincide with the thoughts of Guo Feng, CEO of Guodong. As a traditional manufacturer, Guodong's parent company Huirui Technology is a foundry specializing in OEM for Swiss watch brands. "Most of them are pseudo-concepts, and the actual user experience is not good." This is Guo Feng's view on the products currently on the market.

"We have been manufacturing Swiss watches for 20 years, but we are not willing to just be a manufacturer for others." Guo Feng said that in fact, domestic companies are better than Swiss in some manufacturing technologies, but consumers do not recognize domestic brands, so it is useless no matter how good they are. It is different in the field of intelligence, and this restriction was removed in an instant. Guo Feng registered the "Guodong" brand and began to transform into an Internet brand.

Guo Feng concluded that smart watches are actually a combination of traditional watch technology and mobile phone technology. Among the two major types currently on the market (mobile phone accessories and independent types that can insert SIM cards), watches that insert SIM cards are of little significance because their overall experience is difficult to improve. Whether in terms of size, weight, thickness or wearing comfort, they are inferior to the former.

"We cannot turn smart watches back into smartphones. Watches and mobile phones should be two completely different products." Guo Feng believes that the core positioning of smart watches in the future should be "organoids" of the human body. As a part of the human body, they should provide active feedback and push notifications, rather than allowing people to control the watch.

Based on this idea, Guo Feng believes that smart watches should evolve in the direction of miniaturization. The best watch should be one that people cannot feel its presence, and it must have good waterproof and drop-proof functions.

In Guo Feng's opinion, the biggest difficulty in making smart watches is not mastering the core components. "The new product concepts of international manufacturers are very fresh, but the actual experience is not satisfactory." He gave an example, saying that a manufacturer launched a sensor that claimed to be able to monitor pulse, but in actual use, the monitoring effect was very poor, and the original algorithm was very poor, so it was necessary to purchase the algorithm of other manufacturers.

"We don't want to be a short-lived product, so we don't want to compromise and quickly make something that doesn't provide a good enough experience. This is also the reason why our product has not been released yet." Guo Feng said that the market may be waiting for the arrival of Apple's (95.39, 0.04, 0.04%) iWatch. Apple has spent three years mobilizing global resources for research and development. All signs show that this will be a disruptive product.

Several people in the Shenzhen manufacturing industry revealed that Apple's iWatch is currently being produced on a trial basis at a Taiwanese foundry in China and will soon be put into mass production. "Apple's entry may completely activate this market and redefine smart watches," said the above person.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.