This is not to suggest than an Android smartphone is the proverbial poor man's iPhone. But the economic reality of the competition between them is that iPhone owners have more disposable income and are more willing to spend it. Those are the first preconditions to finding a receptive audience to luxury goods — and a luxury good is exactly what the Tag Heuer Android Wear watch promises to be. The watch clashes with its stated purpose by introducing its own precondition: you won't be able to even boot it up without first connecting an Android device. Without Android, this Tag Heuer watch will be an expensive, probably splendid-looking paperweight.
The Verge
Astute analysis.
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That's just a sampling, but you can see the trend -- each of these analysts expects sales to be above 18 million for the calendar year. Over the past few years, these same analysts have been very conservative -- and wrong -- with their iPhone sales estimates. Even if the smartwatch market expands in 2015 because of new public awareness of the class of devices, I'd expect the Apple Watch to drastically cut into Pebble's sales -- even at the lower entry price points of $179 for the Pebble Time and $250 for the Pebble Time Steel.
Now I do believe there's a place in the market for Pebble Time, as the Pebble platform has a vibrant developer community for both iPhone and Android apps, the price point is lower and the new displays are much improved on the first-generation Pebble devices. Android Wear is even less of a competitor, with only about 500,000 devices sold in 2014 according to sources. Those half-million devices are split among a host of competitors, all of which are probably wondering why they chose to get into the smartwatch market.
Pebble has sold a million of their original devices and Android has sold 500,000. If Apple meets (when they usually exceed) analysts’ estimates of 18 million sales, these two categories of devices will be barely a blip on the radar of smartwatches. Hopefully the introduction and the success of the Apple Watch will encourage serious competitors in the space, but as of right now there are none.
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