Although some feel that a smartwatch is not really necessary, it is an industry that has seen robust global growth. Samsung, however, is moving in the opposite direction and has a market share problem in the smartwatch space. A recent report shows a steep 28% drop in the Korean manufacturer’s market capitalization, despite strong growth among many of its competitors, and one of the main reasons Samsung is seeing this huge drop is a lack of innovation.
Part of the appeal of wearable devices is their novelty; They are still, to some extent, considered a new gadget product, and one of the main reasons the smartwatch market is booming is that people are looking for cutting-edge health and sleep tracking features. That means that if a new iteration of an established watch doesn’t offer fun, eye-catching new features, adoption is going to slow, and that’s exactly the problem Samsung has with the Galaxy Watch 9, which, judging by early previews from Android Headline, looks almost indistinguishable from the Galaxy Watch 8. Same round face, same sensors underneath, and a lack of innovation, really.
The Galaxy Watch 9 is the new 8
If you put the press images from the Android Headlines story alongside photos of the Galaxy Watch 8, you’d be hard-pressed to tell them apart. Visually, they are almost identical, with a circular display mounted on a slightly larger oblong base. The Galaxy Watch has never had a particularly visually remarkable presentation, and the 9 seems to extend that trend, looking rather bland and functional (which is underlined by the two colors it would be available in, Cream and Graphite). The sensors on the bottom of the watch also appear to be the same hardware built into the Watch 8, Samsung’s BioActive sensor array, which packs a number of health sensors into a single module.
There will likely be internal upgrades, as Samsung has said, according to Android Headlines it will use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear Elite chip in upcoming smartwatches. Qualcomm is touting the Wear Elite as the first “NPU-powered wearable platform,” and there’s a clear focus on AI while delivering improved performance and battery life. That said, it looks like it will be available in the same two sizes as previous generations, 40mm and 44mm, and Samsung will really need some sort of headline-grabbing feature if it aims to reclaim some of that lost market share.
