Nokia indicated that had long been sending messages about how important it is for them the segment of the “digital health”, but the truth is that the operation is curious change overall approach that Nokia gives your business. Leaving mobile and focus on the segment of telecommunications infrastructure have gone to bet on personal quantifiers. Why?
Where you did come Withings?
This French manufacturer of gadgets is not a newcomer: seven years ago we started to talk about their products – “connected” scales, devices monitoring babies – but it was not until the departure of the quantification bracelets that this firm began to reactivate its role in the market.
While some were launched to make smart watches and other personal gambled by quantifiers, in Withings did something that was a hybrid of both proposals. Your Withings Activity wanted to try to bring the best of both worlds and became a different product that had the look and design of a traditional watch but with some features of quantifiers.
That commitment was reinforced with the Withings Activité Pop, a review of the original model which among other things was more economical $ 149.
We analyze this model almost exactly a year ago and it was clear that this proposal was very interesting for its battery life and for that basic function (but limited) quantification. While the company did not renew its catalog too he casts a steel version of its quantifier clock, Activité Steel- and now the question is to know what will Nokia to join forces with the company.
The commitment wearable and health can go right
The segment of “wearable” devices and their relationship with the environment of health and public health is one of the most promising future have. All great technology understands that these solutions can provide tangible benefits in our society, and they have become the center of their product strategies.
Apple precisely based part of the future of the Apple Watch in this field: we have seen as at various conferences in which he spoke of this product highlighted its collaboration with hospitals and health – related agencies – CareKit and ResearchKit prove – to assess the benefits sensors of this smart watch could bring in different kinds of conditions.
In Google the same is true, and in fact this firm has long tried to create a huge database through Google Health, a project that died and that has made the internet giant approach this segment of a form of moment timid. Devices based on Android Wear pay special attention to physical activity and not so much to the detection of potential problems, but clearly the leap to purer health counseling would be logical.
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And while we have the estimates of Gartner, which says that sales of wearables will grow 18.4% in 2016 to become of 274.6 million units. In such data it is included smart watches, which sold 50.4 million units, and quantification bracelets, which sold 34.97 million units this year. Do not really know which of these two categories Gartner puts quantifiers Whithings watches, but what is clear is that growth in this area is significant.
Nokia faces fierce competition
Buying Withings allows Nokia to enter that segment that seems guaranteed that there will be growth, but here remains to be seen what may be the proposal of this alliance is strange: Nokia abandonment they got rid of its mobile business by Microsoft and devoted all his strength to compete in a very different market that was already present: telecommunications infrastructure.
In fact this diversification is particularly curious that turn a consumer market in which Nokia ceased to be successful for years. It remains to see what the company does and how it affects strategy Withings both in design and production of devices, but what is clear is that it has a very difficult road ahead.
Especially since there are clear protagonists with which it will be difficult to compete. Not only in the field of smart watches, where Apple and manufacturers working with devices based on Android Wear pose a much more complete the “basic” quantifier alternative. Also in the pure quantification bracelets in which Fitbit continues to dominate with solvency but manufacturers like Xiaomi also have invested heavily in the sector.
Clearly, the growth of the market for wearables and especially the enormous promise of a remarkable integration of services related to health could give much sense to Nokia’s decision, but also that in order to emphasize will have to offer a truly differential proposal. We’ll see how it goes the move to a brand that definitely seems to mean goodbye to the consumer market.