Here's what you'll be talking about over the next 12 months
The new year is now upon us, and it’s time to look forward to 2021, which is set to be another big one for wearables.
The madness of the pandemic has put more focus on wearables helping us monitor our health, fitness and keeping us better connected.
And companies like Apple, Samsung and Fitbit – as well as emerging players like Huami and Huawei – are pushing smartwatches further into their roles as health and fitness devices.
We’ve come up with 21 big predictions of what we think is going to go down in the wearable industry – and grab the headlines – over the next 12 months.
1. Google finally buys Fitbit
If you’ve been paying close attention, news of Google’s acquisition of Fitbit was announced at the tail end of 2019 and in 2020 the deal remained under scrutiny by regulatory bodies.
As things currently stand, the EU has approved the deal, but there’s no details on getting the all-important green light in the US.
We expect the deal to finally be approved in 2021, which will mean turning our attention to just what this means for Google’s smartwatches.
Wear OS needs a serious shot in the arm and while talk of a flagship Pixel watch was more muted in 2020, a flagship smartwatch pulling in Google and Fitbit’s expertise still feels like something that’s on the cards.
The big G may have already started making moves after it put in a large order of processors with Samsung, with the capacity to capture body movement via sensors.
Neither Google nor Fitbit have been standing still in waiting for the deal to get over the line to start these conversations of what a future Google smartwatch powered by Fitbit will look like.
The presence of Google Assistant on Fitbit’s latest smartwatches is a clear indication of that. Now should be the time to show us what a Fitbit and Google smartwatch union looks like on the hardware front too.
2. Amazfit grows a smarter smartwatch army
In 2020, Huami hit double figures for smartwatch launches. It gave us multiple versions of its budget-tastic Bip, a watch built for the outdoors named after a dinosaur, and also its GTR 2 and GTS 2 ‘fashion’ watch duo.
In 2021, we don’t expect any slow down with the Amazfit watch launches, but what we do think is that we will see those smartwatches behave more like smartwatches. With the GTR 2 and GTS 2, we got smart assistants, music players and the ability to handle calls. These features, while not perfect, were a start to offering a more rounded experience. We expect these features to get better, which would bring it more into the conversation with Fitbit’s and Google’s Wear OS watch clan.
Huami has already shown it can offer strong fitness tracking features and attractive watch designs, so 2021 will be about making the kind of improvements that will make Amazfit’s wearables a better alternative to what Fitbit, Google, Samsung and others are offering up. We think Huami is up to making that happen.
