I think there's significant potential for a wristband fitness/health device, like a more advanced Fitbit.
But yeah, anything like the Pebble is probably a dead end; in five years or so, Glass will have replaced all its functionality and much more for anyone who already wears eyeglasses.
I'm a trained watchmaker from WOSTEP, so you can trust that I know a thing or two about watches. I picked up a Pebble because of "hot new tech", and honestly couldn't find a use for it immediately. Only when I decided my normal watch needed to be serviced did I actually commit to wearing the Pebble full time for a couple weeks.
Agreed that any knockoff/clone of a Pebble is a dead end. The Pebble is a great annoyance device. It's fun when I'm working at my computer to see what order an iMessage from my Wife comes in on. Is it going to be my iPhone, then Pebble and then my Mac, or the Mac, Pebble then iPhone? It's a fun game, if you like receiving the same alert on 3 devices within a couple seconds of each other. Any new product that is any old product with a screen and connecting to the internet or another device over BTLE is going to be 2014's "It's X, but social!" from a couple years ago. This includes Glass, since it does absolutely nothing more than create an extension of your portable notification device's screen projected up to your eye. It's quite literally "Eyeglasses, but with a screen connected to the internet!". It doesn't make people more connected, it makes the wearer disconnected from the world.
Good point. I agree a purpose-specific device could find a niche.
But the smart watch thing seems to be a dead end - too small a screen to compete with a smartphone (which 'everybody' has now), too bulky and 'uncool' to compete with a basic watch (telling the time) or fashion/jewelry watch (pretty accessory).
Of course that was what people said about iPads - why would you want that if you have a laptop and smartphone ... so maybe I'm completely wrong.
I doubt it; wristwatches have origin in the military need for a readily accessible chronometer for coordination among forces in different locations, and I tend to think that their having become popular in civilian life is an accident of history resulting from millions of soldiers having worn their watches home from the two world wars. We're now roughly two and a half to three generations from the latter such war, and wristwatches have been largely reduced to the status of niche fashion accessory; even in my own childhood, a wristwatch was still considered de rigeur and I had several growing up, but now not even anyone in my own generation much bothers with the things, to say nothing of my generation's kids.
Absent some repopularizing event, a category for which "Apple and Google would really like to sell a lot of smart watches" fails to qualify, I see no reason to imagine the trend spontaneously reversing itself.
The fall of the wrist watch has a lot more to do with the rise of the mobile phone that has a clock (even "dumb" phones had the time). Regular people have an equal if not greater need to coordinate with each other than soldiers in war.
Civilians also tend to have a lot more clocks handy, even absent mobile phones. I'll grant, though, that wristwatches would've stuck around, as an acceptably convenient means of carrying around a timepiece, had not mobile phones with clock displays come along.
The point, in any case, is that there's nothing intrinsically special about wearing a chronometer, or any other information display, on one's wrist, such that "smart watches" are necessarily a qualitative improvement over, for example, "smart phones".
But these are nothing new; you could get them 10 years ago. My Suunto is at least 6 years old (heart rate, GPS, calories, training effect, yadda yadda).
But yeah, anything like the Pebble is probably a dead end; in five years or so, Glass will have replaced all its functionality and much more for anyone who already wears eyeglasses.