没人需要苹果iWatch

    坊间盛传苹果公司（Apple）和三星公司（Samsung）要打造一个“智能”手表来匹配他们自己的智能手机。这个想法似乎是个蠢到家的主意。这两家一贯明智的公司如果进入低利润率的手机配件市场，那将是一个不可挽回的错误。因为这个市场竞争极其激烈，同时进入门槛低得出奇。再者，这个新玩意儿的实用性也让人怀疑，它很可能只会吸引一小部分不入流的技术极客和那些胖乎乎的周末健身族。

    苹果正在开发一款和iPhone搭配的手表，这个传言已经流传了好一段时间。硅谷的街头巷议还传言说，苹果现在投入了100多位设计师开发这个产品。不过，还没有什么可靠的证据支持这个传言——没看到谍照，只有一些用Photoshop加工过的伪照。

    但很显然，这种情况并没有阻止苹果在手机市场的最大对手——三星开发自己的智能手表，以对抗传说中的苹果产品。三星移动业务执行副总裁李永熙最近接受《彭博新闻》（ Bloomberg News）采访时表示，三星已经“在智能手表开发准备了很长时间，”并“正全力以赴地为它做好各项准备。”

    苹果或三星开发的所谓“智能手表”到底有什么功能目前还不得而知，但它实在用不上100位天赋出众的苹果产品工程师为它绞尽脑汁地工作。因为市面上已经有很多“智能手表”了，而且它们的功能都大同小异。

    这种手表通常是嵌在一条俗气的塑料腕带里，通过蓝牙和智能手机连接，把手机上的各种信息传输到它的小屏幕上。比如，如果你有来电，它就会显示来电人姓名和电话号码，有些还能显示短信。这种手表还能控制一些应用和手机上的音乐播放器。哦，对了，它们还能显示时间。

    智能手表这种创意一点都不新鲜。比如，失败数码产品之王微软公司（Microsoft）2002年就曾经大张旗鼓地推出了它的所谓“SPOT”智能手表，但几年后这玩意儿就销声匿迹了。SPOT通过调频广播信号向手表传输实时信息，比如天气、交通和体育比赛的比分等等。它并不和手机连接（那时候手机还没现在这么智能）。

    微软的个人用品集团（Personal Objects Group）总经理比尔•米切尔2002年曾这么吹嘘了SPOT一番：“想想看，有这么一款旅行闹表该有多方便。它除了能准确显示时间和自动适应不同时区外，还能用你最喜欢的WMA编码音乐叫醒你，能显示你想走的旅行路线上的道路封闭信息，还能发出紧急信息。”

    Apple and Samsung's purported desire to create a "smart" watch to pair with their smartphones seems to be an incredibly dumb idea. The two, usually wise, companies would be making a grave mistake entering the low-margin cellular accessory market, where the competition is fierce and the barriers to entry are incredibly low. Furthermore, the utility of such a device seems questionable, likely appealing to a limited subset of consumers of unfashionable geeks and pudgy weekend warriors.

    Rumors that Apple (AAPL) is developing a watch to pair with its iPhone have been swirling around for a while now. The word on the street in Silicon Valley is that the company has about 100 designers working on the product. Nevertheless, there has been little in the way of substantive proof to back up the assertions—no leaked photos, just questionable Photoshop mockups.

    But that apparently isn't stopping Samsung, Apple's biggest rival in the handset market, from developing a smartwatch of its own to counter the phantom Apple product. Lee Young Hee, Samsung's chief executive, told Bloomberg News in an interview that his company has been, "preparing the watch product for so long," and that Samsung was, "working very hard to get ready for it."

    It is unclear what a "smartwatch" by either Apple or Samsung will actually do, but it doesn't take the brainpower of 100 gifted Apple product engineers to figure it out. That's because there are already a bevy of "smartwatches" on the market and they pretty much all do the same thing.

    The watch, usually inlaid in a tacky plastic band, connects to a smartphone via Bluetooth to deliver notifications from your phone to its tiny screen. The watch will alert you if you have an incoming call, by displaying the name and number of the contact, and some even display text messages. The watch can also control some apps and the phone's music player, as well. Oh, and they all can tell you the time, too.

    The idea of a smartwatch isn't new. Microsoft (MSFT), the king of failed digital products, rolled out its "SPOT" smartwatch to much fanfare in 2002 only to see it crater a few years later. The SPOT used FM radio signals to deliver real-time information to the watch, such as weather, traffic and sports scores. It didn't link up with your phone. (Back then, phones were still dummies.)

    "Imagine how handy it would be to have a travel alarm clock that, in addition to telling time very accurately and auto-adjusting to time-zones, could also wake you to your favorite WMA-encoded music, display information about road closures along your expected travel route, and deliver urgent messages," Bill Mitchell, general manager of the Microsoft Personal Objects Group, said about the SPOT watch in 2002.

    Its hard not to laugh now. But having access to that information from your watch in 2002 would have been pretty cool. Today, though, you can get that info and much more via your smartphone. The SPOT service ran users $60 a month and required wearing a clunky watch–both negatives in the eyes of consumers. When wireless providers began offering cheap data plans wrapped with their phone, the SPOT watch was basically doomed.