You don't need network capabilities for half those things (payments, biometrics, GPS). For them to be useful enough for many people to want to set their phone aside for a few hours, they do. Yes, you can track your workout or use a geolocation-based shopping app with GPS-only, but you can't reference historical data, check your current vitals versus your history, collaborate live data with others, pull up live maps, or pull coupon and pricing info without combining data. You can upload/download later, but that's not nearly as useful.
We'll see what native apps crop up for watches that are standalone and independent from a phone, but for now, I don't see any reason to pay $10 a month for a phone. Having to pay to add a device to your account certainly is a detractor, but as we see with phones, carriers might help subsidize and the usage monetization of the devices should help keep hardware prices down. I wouldn't be shocked to see very capable $199 watches that you can get free from Verizon and add to your plan for $5/month a couple years from now.
And it's not that I'm cheap-- this is from someone who can't be bothered to carry more than one credit card to maximize rewards :) Many people can't be bothered. But they jump at the opportunity when it is made automatic and they don't have to carry physical cards with them. A data-connected watch could enable precisely this. |
