Once upon a time, the peak of consumer technological innovation was the invention of the answering machine. It meant we could leave our homes safe in the knowledge that if someone needed to reach us, they would… eventually… when we came back home. Then technology evolved: first we stuck pagers (beepers to some) on our belts so at least we would know immediately if someone needed to reach us (then we could look for an available fixed-line phone to call back from). Then we got two-way pagers and finally, of course, the mobile phone. We are no longer “out” and away from our phones: reach me anytime, anywhere, about anything.
As though that wasn’t enough (is technology ever really enough?) we took another connectivity step forward and strapped smartwatches onto our wrists so we couldn’t possibly miss a call while we were exercising or otherwise tracking our biometrics. A quick, sudden burst of vibration on the wrist pretty much always grabs our attention. But has it gone too far? There is, after all, an irony that a device designed to track your well-being and stress is probably responsible for additional stress due to the notifications and other quasi-pointless information.
And so, as I mentioned in my previous blog (The Inescapable Quantity of Time), I’ve taken a step back. I’ve abandoned my smartwatch for the singularly focused smart band. It doesn’t matter which precise one (Garmin, Whoop, Hume, Fitbit … I am sure there are more ready to launch any day); they all do sort of the same thing, tracking your wellness and fitness and nothing more. That may sound limited, but I would argue the accuracy of a band’s information is better than any other device I’ve used in the past.
There are no notifications, no buzzing of the wrist… not even a reminder of what time it is and they are, as a category, liberating and brilliant. In fact, they remind me of the very first activity tracker I strapped to my wrist: the Jawbone UP. That too had no display and, as far as I recall, no vibrating alerts. I only gave that device up when it broke and began my slippery descent down the wearables rabbit hole of complexity piled upon complexity.
It’s almost as though I’ve reverted to using an answering machine: my smartphone is still on silent, so when it’s in my pocket I do not notice any calls, messages or other supposedly important reminders. And my stress level is better for it I am sure (just as I’m sure that my smart band will tell me so). And just like an answering machine, eventually I’ll go “home”, pulling my phone out of my pocket and check out what I’ve missed while I was “away”.
I’m not alone with this desire to be a little less connected. We see it with smartphones with the (albeit small) resurgence of basic flip phones as well as increased awareness of just how much screentime we use each day, but the wearable is an easier backwards step to make. And this puts the smart band in an interesting category: it’s not an activity tracker in the way we’ve come to think of them and it certainly isn’t a smartwatch. If anything, the band competes more against the smart ring category in terms of features and functionality (or lack thereof). And yet… it feels better and far less clumsy than a smart ring.
Don’t get me wrong: the band category is small today. Whoop’s 12-month unit sales, for example, are a tiny fraction compared to the big smartwatch guys. But the company’s growth momentum is increasing. With the entry of Garmin and Google into the category, awareness is starting to rise significantly and we can expect the smart band to be a wearables sub-category to watch.
What will be interesting to track is how this category shakes up the wearables space. 24% of consumers still actively use a fitness tracker, while 40% of consumers use a smartwatch (there’s a lot of overlap between those categories). I expect the activity tracker market to morph into a smart band market. But I suspect we will also see an impact on both the smart ring space – which is still somewhat nascent at 8% ownership – and the smartwatch space as people begin to take a step back from the always on, always available lifestyle we’ve slipped into.