Speaking of the smart products widely used by people at present, besides smart phones, the most well-known smart devices should be smart bracelets. But surely we can feel that smart sports bracelets have not been as popular as a few years ago. In just a few years, the smart bracelet market has gone through the ups and downs from initial launch to product popularity, and then to increasingly depressed.
Once upon a time, intelligent hardware enterprises are unlimited
The intelligent products bred in the intelligent era attract people’s attention. According to the data of China Business Information Network, 14 million high-tech wearable devices were sold in the global market in 2011, and nearly 70 million smart wearable devices are expected to be sold globally by 2017. The rapid progress of intelligent technology directly promotes smart wearable devices into the public eye.
Smart wristband is a kind of wearable smart device. Users can record real-time data in daily life such as exercise, sleep and diet through smart wristband, and synchronize these data with mobile phone, so as to guide healthy life through data. Among many smart wearable devices, smart wristbands have attracted many young consumers to buy them because of their small and delicate appearance, novel and intelligent performance. In addition, in recent years, the post-90s users have begun to pay attention to health, and the popularity of users’ healthy lifestyle has also made smart bracelets rapidly hot.
2017-2022 China smart bracelet industry market supply and demand forecast in-depth research report shows that in 2015, the domestic smart bracelet market scale reached 4.5 billion yuan, 2016 smart bracelet market scale reached about 5.6 billion yuan, and is expected to reach 7 billion yuan in 2017, the average growth rate of more than 15%. In the broad “money” landscape and prospects, Jawbone, Xiaomi, Huawei and other technology companies rushed into the market, hoping to take a slice of the smart bracelet market blank.
In 2011, Jawbone moved away from its mature product line of speakers and headphones to make smart wristbands. Thanks to the wearables boom, Jawbone has been heavily funded and was valued at $3.2 billion in 2014. The real overnight popularity of the domestic smart bracelet may be after the advent of Mi smart bracelet. In 2014, Xiaomi’s smart phone quickly attracted the attention of domestic consumers with an ultra-low price of 79 yuan, and then the smart wearable market ushered in the fashionable era of smart bracelets. By 2017, xiaomi’s shipments of wristbands had exceeded 30 million.
Compared with Xiaomi’s low price, Huawei’s wristband is positioned as medium price. Relying on mature technology accumulation and good market reputation, Huawei’s wristband also performs very well in the smart wear market. Huawei’s smart wearable devices have made great achievements. According to THE statistics of IDC, the sales volume of Huawei smart wearable devices in the third quarter of 2017 was 1.6 million, compared with 600,000 units in the same period.
With the accumulation of technology in the early stage and the support of consumers for smart products, plus the pursuit of capital, smart bracelet ushered in a big explosion. Everyone has a smart bracelet, which once became the standard of science and technology fashion. However, just a few years later, Jawbone went bankrupt in the smart band market, and Xiaomi’s smart band sales declined…
Today, smart bracelets are a thing of the past
Unfortunately, the smart bracelet industry did not last long. After a short period of popularity, it quickly declined and finally disappeared in the memory trend of the vast sea of people. The ups and downs of smart wristband manufacturers can be summed up with the phrase “see him rise tall, see him feast, see his building collapse”.
I. The decline of smart bracelets from the death of Jawbone
Before the transition to smart wristband, Jawbone’s three iconic products: Bluetooth headset, speaker and Up smart wristband were deeply loved by consumers. After the transformation in 2011, Jawbone’s smart products were mainly produced by smart bracelets. In 2014, Jawbone obtained a large-scale financing and its valuation was as high as $3.2 billion. After 18 years of survival and success, Jawbone finally overcame financial difficulties and began liquidation proceedings in July 2017, when the tower collapsed.
At that time, Jawbone developed a fashionable smart bracelet, UP, which could count steps, check heartbeat, and measure sleep status. The price was 900 to 1200 YUAN. When Jawbone was the only one, UP was a hot seller on the Internet. However, smart wristbands are cheap to make. Most of them cost about three or four dollars out of the factory. The price of Jawbone is too high, and people are willing to try new things. Once the novelty wears off, people’s interest in smart bracelets will disappear.
Later, as more smart wristband manufacturers entered the market, Jawbone lost its exclusive advantage and its product disadvantages began to emerge gradually. On the one hand, low-priced smart bracelets with similar functions sold by domestic manufacturers have a great impact on Jawbone. For example, a Xiaomi wristband with features such as counting steps and checking heartbeats costs only 79 yuan, which takes Jawbone’s edge away. Jawbone, on the other hand, lacks innovation and excitement, and doesn’t offer any eye-catching innovations other than the ability to measure steps and the so-called heartbeat.
In fact, the core competition of intelligent products lies in technology, service and cost performance. Jawbone had its own reasons for its demise: its first products didn’t support Bluetooth, it had quality issues that tended to crash, and it made mistakes both in technology and service. There are also external factors: Awbone’s bankruptcy shows how competition in the smart-wear industry is heating up. To be sure, other smart-wearers are suffering too. Xiaomi sold 3.6 million units in the third quarter, down 3.3 percent from 3.7 million units in the same period last year, according to IDC. What’s more, Intel is shutting down its wearables business, Fitbit’s share is declining, and many former band makers are switching businesses.
Second, the decline of the smart bracelet market can be attributed to three factors
After all, smart bracelets are no longer a new technology in the eyes of the public. Like many new Internet products, smart bracelets have also begun to calm down from the economic storm. And the people’s eyes are clear, just as the outside world on Jawbone’s death speculation, smart bracelet industry cold reasons can be attributed to the following points:
First, the low – price competition that spends money to accompany run is becoming increasingly white-hot. In the domestic consumer market, the first factor influencing consumers’ purchase is often price rather than function and brand. Looking at various domestic industries, we can see the industry status quo of low-price monopoly, serious homogeneity and uneven product quality. The smart bracelet market is the same, the highest sales volume is the lowest price brand, a number of high-end, high-price international bracelet sales are not very ideal. And when the high-end large factories have closed, low-end small factories suffered market shock more routed.
Second, product positioning affects future development. Throughout the development history of People’s Daily necessities, smart phones have replaced traditional mobile phones, and smart furniture has replaced traditional furniture, which shows that comfortable, convenient and practical smart products are people’s constant pursuit. However, the hardware and software functions of smart bracelets are still subversive and expandable, and the short battery life, high cost and high price also restrict the development of smart bracelets. That is to say, the development of smart bracelet technology and category is not perfect, and it is not a necessity of life, it is unlikely to change our life in an all-round way like smart phone, smart furniture.
Third, the smart bracelet product homogenization is serious. At present, the smart wristband is similar in function, the main function is no more than counting steps, call reminder, monitoring heart rate, blood pressure, sleep quality and so on. Therefore, the fundamental reason for the decline in the heat of smart bracelets is the product homogeneity, functional chicken ribs and other fundamental diseases.
Overall, the demise of Jawbone is a pity, whether due to external factors or its own. In the decline of the market at the same time, people also began to speculate that the next failure of intelligent hardware enterprises will be Xiaomi, Huawei and other domestic brands, after all, the whole smart bracelet market is on the decline.
Smart bracelet manufacturers can still make a comeback
Although most smart bracelet manufacturers have entered a bottleneck period, the speed of technological update and iteration has not slowed down. With the effective support of mobile Internet, cloud computing and big data, the scientific and technological products on the market have moved forward from the initial product functionalization to the intelligent direction of solving users’ pain points. It is the pursuit of consumers to bring intelligent and comfortable lifestyle to users with the leading technology under the continuous upgrading of consumption.
For enterprises, on the one hand, as one of the tools for people to achieve smart life, smart bracelets need constant innovation to grow faster. In fact, smart bracelet manufacturers have also begun to explore the intention to achieve product innovation, such as Huawei’s 50-meter waterproof, scientific sleep and other functions, and Samsung’s foldable curved screen smart bracelet, which are the performance of smart bracelet innovation. As a hot seller on the journey of smart mobile wearable devices in China, smart bracelet represents the in-depth extension of leading technology in specific fields, and there is still a long way to go in the future.
On the other hand, from the perspective of the whole industry, the smart bracelet industry is shifting from extensive development mode to refined development. The current competition pattern has accelerated the development process of smart bracelet, which has innovative significance in both technology and practical application. Therefore, in the future, smart bracelets need to target the needs of different people, precise force, and even look beyond the health, sports, fashion and other fields.
Just like the survival of “natural selection and survival of the fittest” in nature, the smart bracelet market is like a battlefield, and the smart wear industry is facing a big reshuffle. Only after the smart bracelet smoothly passes through the trough can it be reborn and move forward to a higher technical field. Therefore, the current downturn of smart bracelets will not last long. With the rapid innovation of technology, it is likely that the small smart bracelets will erupt with great energy in the future…
Liu Kuang, meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110