Thoughts from a Bafta nominated Podcaster, Blogger, Writer and Commentator.
Good news! Samsung sold 500,000 smartwatches! Except… I wonder if that counts the return rate, the number bundled with a Galaxy S4 and S5 and placed in a drawer, and those that are still sitting on shelves but classified as sold?
ArsTechnica highlights the hack on the Samsung Galaxy Gear watch so that it breaks out of the ‘walled function garden’ that Samsung placed it in, and allow it to almost any Android app. As wearables becomes the new technology battleground, the battle between ‘companion’ and ‘standalone’ will continue… just as the old one-box or two-box challenge dogged the PDA/mobile field at the turn of the century.
Here’s a fun game to play over the next few days. Watch the news websites and tech blogs and see how many articles about the Samsung Galaxy Gear are posted. Looking at web traffic numbers on some stories in the first 24 hours, it doesn’t look like the announcement of the Galaxy Gear has created any significant public enthusiasm. If it has, websites are going to keep finding angles to write about the watch. Right now? It’s a sea of ‘Samsung were too early’, ‘This looks silly’, ‘They really want to lock-in users’, and ‘Why?’ stories. That’s fine for today,
