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A small smartphone like device worn on the wrist.
Many smart watches are connected to a smartphone that notifies the user of incoming calls, e-mail messages, and notifications from applications. Some smartwatches come with pedometers and heart-rate monitors to help users track their health.
A smartwatch is a portable device that's designed to be worn on a wrist. Like smartphones, they use touchscreens, offer apps, and often record your heart rate and other vital signs.
A Short History of the Smartwatch
While digital watches have been around for decades—some with abilities like calculators and unit converters—only in the 2010s did tech companies begin releasing watches with smartphone-like abilities.
At the same time, advances in silicon miniaturization opened the door to other kinds of dedicated-purpose smartwatches. Companies like Garmin, for example, support smartwatches like the Fenix, which are more rugged and optimized with sensors and trackers to support back-country expeditions. Likewise, companies like Suunto released smartwatches optimized for scuba diving that withstand extended time at significant depths.
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Most smartwatches—whether they're intended for daily use (as with the Apple Watch) or for specific purposes (as with the Garmin Fenix)—offer a suite of standard features:
- Notifications: Smartphones display notifications to alert you of important events or activities. The types of notifications differ; devices connected to a smartphone may simply mirror the phone's notifications on your wrist, but other smartwatches display notifications that only a wearable could provide. For example, the newest Apple Watch includes a fall sensor. If you fall while wearing the watch, it senses your subsequent movement. If it doesn't detect any movement, it sends a series of escalating notifications. Fail to respond to the notification, and the watch assumes you're injured and alerts authorities on your behalf.
- Apps: Beyond displaying notifications from your phone, a smartwatch is only as good as the apps it supports. App ecosystems vary, and they're tied to either Apple's or Google's environments. Smartwatches with a dedicated purpose, such as hiking or diving, generally support the apps they need to accomplish that purpose without the opportunity to add other kinds of apps.
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- Answer messages by voice: Remember the old Dick Tracy comics, where the hero detective used a watch as a phone? Modern smartwatches running either the watch OS or Wear operating systems support voice dictation.
- Fitness tracking: If you’re a hard-core athlete, a dedicated fitness band is likely a better choice than a smartwatch. Still, many smartwatches include a heart rate monitor and a pedometer to help track your workouts.
- GPS: Most smartwatches include a GPS for tracking your location or receiving location-specific alerts.
- Good battery life: Modern smartwatches feature batteries that get you through the day, with normal use, with a bit of juice still left to go. Battery use varies; the Apple Watch typically gets 18 hours of normal use on a single charge, while the Pebble gets two or three days.
The definition of Smartwatch on this page is an original TechTerms.com definition. If you would like to reference this page or cite this definition, you can use the green citation links above.
The goal of TechTerms.com is to explain computer terminology in a way that is easy to understand. We strive for simplicity and accuracy with every definition we publish. If you have feedback about the Smartwatch definition or would like to suggest a new technical term.You also see vendor-specific classes of general-purpose smartwatches in the consumer market:
- Apple Watch: Designed and sold by Apple.
- Wear watches: Designed and sold by many vendors, using Google's Wear operating system.
- Tizen watches: Proprietary operating system designed by Samsung for its popular Galaxy line of smartwatches.
The other niche includes specialty devices intended for specific-use cases. These devices often offer a more robust version of a fitness tracker, insofar as they bleed between a phone-dependent smartwatch and a stand-alone fitness tracker like a Fitbit.
Examples of these specialized devices include:
- Hiking watches: Intended for remote travel and featuring solid battery life, GPS tracking and navigation, basic vitals, and weather forecasting. Often engineered for advanced durability to protect against bumps, drops, dust, and water. Examples include the Garmin Fenix 5 Plus, the Suunto 9 Baro, and the TomTom Adventurer.
- Diving watches: Connect your first-stage regulator to a Bluetooth transmitter to use a diving watch. Garmin's Descent Mk1 and Suunto's DX offer depth, time-remaining, temperature, and other important indicators.
- Flying watches: A niche market, but Garmin's D2 Delta PX offers on-wrist pulse Ox, a logbook, a GPS-powered moving map, and NEXRAD weather.
Smartwatch Market Growth
Smartwatches settled into a steep growth curve in the late 2010s in terms of global market adoption. Data from Statista shows that sales rose from five million units worldwide in 2014 to an estimated 141 million in 2018. Apple's market share rose from 13% to 17% from the second fiscal quarter of 2017 to the same period in 2018; Apple experienced year-over-year growth of more than 38% for its Apple Watch Series 3—despite that the Series 4, a major upgrade, was already on the horizon.
During the same period, specialty vendors like Garmin saw a 4.1% increase in year-over-year growth, while fitness-tracker-only vendors like Fitbit saw a nearly 22% market plunge.
Statista predicts that over 130 million smartwatches will ship worldwide by 2023.
Types of Smartwatches
- Broadly speaking, smartwatches occupy two niches in the wearables market. First, a general-purpose smartwatch—like the Apple Watch and most Google Power Weared Devices - blend form and function. They're designed to replace mechanical wristwatches and are heavily smartphone-dependent. Think of them as a support device for your phone that you happen to keep on your wrist.
