Business | Wearable computing

Watch this space

The next tech battleground may be your wrist

|SAN FRANCISCO

HUMANS are “so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea,” says “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, a comic novel. Pebble, a maker of smartwatches, begs to differ. On January 23rd it started shipping digital devices that strap to your wrist but are nonetheless rather neat.

The thousands of people who contributed over $10m in pre-orders last year to finance Pebble do not think themselves primitive. For their cash, they will be the first to receive $150 slim devices that can show e-mail, text and Facebook messages received by the nearby smartphones to which they are wirelessly connected. The messages appear on an elegant LCD screen. The watches can run useful—nay, lifesaving—apps, such as a rangefinder for golfers. They can be programmed to vibrate when phone calls come in. They even tell the time.

Pebble isn’t the only company springing into the watch business. Other start-ups such as ConnecteDevice, which produces the Cookoo watch, and I’m Watch, an Italian firm, are also touting connected timepieces. Japan’s Sony is promoting its SmartWatch, which works with Android phones. And there are rumours that both Apple and Google have smartwatch prototypes under development. Last year Google filed a patent for a watch with what looked like a small, flip-up display screen.

Smartwatch start-ups have borrowed ideas from smartphone-makers. They have packed their watches with tiny sensors that can be exploited by various apps. They use software to prolong battery life. (Pebble’s watch can go seven days without a charge.) And they have encouraged other developers to create apps for their timepieces.

Massimiliano Bertolini, a co-inventor of I’m Watch, admits it will take time for people to get used to recharging their watches, but he says they will soon find it worthwhile. He knows he must watch out in case a tech giant such as Apple invades his turf. Were that to happen, he says, it would prove that smartwatches really are a business of the future. Only time will tell.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "Watch this space"

The gambler

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