During a press event at Berlin's IFA electronics conference, South Korean tech giant Samsung unveiled its first real foray into wearable technology by introducing the Galaxy Gear Smartwatch to the world. The device offers a slew of incredible features to augment the wearer's Galaxy smartphone, but the question must now be asked, will people purchase a wrist-accessory these days?
For a long time smartphone users have joked that the watch has become obsolete since everyone now has a clock on his or her phone right in his or her bag or pocket. Futurist Paul Saffo told USA Today that the Samsung Galaxy Gear Smartwatch will have some hurdles to overcome before people are ready to strap on a smartwatch and be seen in the world.
"At the moment, the only people who wear things on their wrist are people old enough to have an AARP card. Students look at wristwatches today the same way that their grandparents looked at pocket watches in the middle of the last century, as an unbelievably old-fashioned thing," Saffo says. "But that is about to change."
That attitude plus the $299 price tag makes the Galaxy Gear Smartwatch a tough sell for a younger generation, typically the generation that would use a tech item like this. However, it's possible that smartwatches will soon become part of the mainstream as they become more and more impossible to ignore.
Samsung's wrist accessory made headlines, meanwhile Sony has its own SmartWatch 2 product hitting shelves this month and Apple and Google are expected to be next in the line of tech companies getting themselves into the realm of wearable wrist devices. Typically these kinds of accessories were only available for fitness calculations and to aid in people's personal workout routines. However, now that the trend seems to be going toward having to pull a cumbersome smartphone out of one's bag or pocket less and less throughout the day, smartwatches might force users to get on board.
The Samsung Galaxy Gear can receive calls and text messages, it can read e-mails and even snap photos. All of the things people have to pull their phone in and out in order to do are now comfortably located on the wrist. Only time will tell if smartwatches actually catch on though.
