The Apple Watch and Lumo’s Lift Posture and Activity Tracker will take the holiday-sales lead in the smart watch and fitness-tracker categories, respectively, based on online consumer reviews, Argus Insights predicted.
The two products top the list of the top 10 models forecast by Argus to be most in demand in both categories. Consumers will be most likely to open up their pocketbooks for these models in a market in which overall demand has flattened, Argus said. The company found a 4.7 percent year-over-year drop in consumer demand in October for the overall wearables market.
In analyzing more than 6,000 consumer reviews from Oct. 4 through Nov. 11, Argus also concluded that the appearance of the Apple Watch, higher-end Pebble Time Steel, and LG Watch Urbane in the list shows “consumers are willing to spend extra for a strong smart watch product” and that smart watch consumers “appreciate excellence in design and quality.”
Overall wearables consumers, Argus also concluded, “appreciate the ability to track their heart rate and other fitness-related stats over the laundry list of features more smart watches offer.”
Asus and Motorola watches also made the watch list, but Samsung watches did not.
The fitness-tracker list was topped by newcomer Lumo with its Lift posture and activity tracker, followed by products from Fitbit, Microsoft, Garmin and Withings.
Consumers were “extremely pleased with Lumo’s simplicity, ease of use, and instant actionable feedback of the clip-on posture monitor,” Argus said of Lumo’s showing in the fitness-tracking category.
As for Samsung’s inability to crack the top 10, Argus CEO John Feland pointed out that the company’s absence “shows Samsung is still searching for what consumers are looking for” despite the appearance of other Android Wear watches on the list.
Argus concluded that smart watch features like texting and email “are not contributing as much to user delight to the extent that fitness features like heart rate, calorie, and step monitoring are.” In the fitness-tracker category, consumers are also “clearly demanding heart rate monitors as the top must-have feature. The Jawbone Up4 with heart-rate monitor, for example, beat out all other other Jawbone devices to make an appearance in the top 10.
