Weekly poll results: Apple Watches surprisingly popular, Google and Samsung need to step up their game

While smartphones have converged on pretty much the same formula, there is a wide variety of smart watch/band/ring/etc. devices out there. And the results from last week’s poll are quite interesting.

Most of our readers who use a smart wearable have an Apple Watch. We are pretty sure that most of our readers have Android phones, but apparently, they don’t use smart wearables all that much.

That aside, Wear OS is surprisingly low – almost half the popularity of Apple’s watchOS watches. Other advanced smartwatch platforms (e.g. Huawei) are also more popular than the platform that is primarily supported by Google and Samsung.

Here’s another result that we didn’t expect – smart bands are more popular than basic smartwatches. Unlike their Wear OS/watchOS counterparts, basic smartwatches offer essentially the same functionality as smart bands.

Their only real advantage is aesthetics – if you want a round watch on your wrist that is. Some smart bands offer great battery life despite smaller batteries and they are cheaper and smaller to boot.

Smart rings are a very new category, so they are still a blip on the radar, as expected. It would be interesting to see how that changes in the next few years.

Smart wearables differ from smartphones in another important way – people are in no rush to upgrade them. More than half the voters in the second poll will be keeping their wearable this year.

We set a relatively short time frame, asking about plans to upgrade this year. But reading through the comments, it’s clear that many use watches/bands that are 3, 4 or even 5 years old. Smartphone upgrade cycles are getting longer, but they aren’t at that level yet.

Only 7% of voters will be buying their first smart wearable this year, which suggests that the market is becoming saturated – everyone who wanted one, already has one. Of course, our audience is more tech-savvy than most, so buying into more tech gadgets early is not surprising.