Recently it feels like everyone and their brother has come out with a new smart watch. Big names like Google and Samsung have been leading the charge, along with a slew of other startup companies, but consumers are not responding as strongly as manufacturers have hoped. Most smart watches currently available offer the same features that smart phones do, providing little incentive for customers to invest in the wearable devices.

Apple is looking to change that though. The company plans on releasing several versions of their watch, dubbed the iWatch, that will include more than 10 different sensors used to track activity and health data. According to The Wall Street Journal, Quanta Computer Inc. is set to begin production of the new devices within the next few months. The new smart watches are expected to be available by the end of this year.

Still sales from smart watches and other wearable devices have been slow in the first quarter of this year. Only 2.9 million devices have been sold, compared to the 300 million smart phones that were sold in the same amount of time.  Many in the industry though believe that Apple will be the company to change all that.

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The Apple brand carries a lot of weight with it. Just the fact that the smartwatch is produced by Apple may convince many nay-sayers to take a chance on the emerging technology. They revolutionized both the phone and tablet industry with the iPhone and iPad, so it is not unreasonable to hope that Apple will work its techy magic once again. Nick Spencer, an analyst at ABI Research, explained, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, “Apple’s ability to design both hardware and software gives it a leg up on competitors because it can present a cohesive vision for a new product.”

There has yet to be a dominate product released into the wearable smart device field. While Google, Samsung, and Nike have all released their own products, nobody seems to be boasting claims of great success at this point. Nike even announced layoffs in its Nike Fuelband division, creating speculation that the device is not doing well. Indeed it is the smaller brands such as Fitbit Force, Jawbone Up, and Garmin Vivofit that have been leading sales in wearable activity monitors.

In reality though, it is not the watch that matters. The real winner will be whoever figures out the most efficient data collection method. As more devices emerge the shape of the hardware will start to matter less than how much data can be collected. Apple’s intuitive nature as to what the consumer wants has been right on in the past. No one should be to surprised if the California based tech giant comes up with the winning answer once again.  Nonetheless, Google recently announced their version of wearable tech, beating apple to the punch. Google will have their Samsung Gear Live released on July 7th of this year.

iWATCH

iWatch via venestudio.com

Image credit:  venestudio.com