App Developers to See Another Fractionalized Market for Smart Wearable Apps

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Here we go again @#$!4! Another market, another plethora of operating systems, SDKs, app markets, and more. Of course, you’ve read our headline and know we are talking about the smart wearables market, specifically the smart watch market, which is rapidly becoming much more mainstream that current glasses options.

We recently posted an article commenting on a recent Koru Labs report on their thoughts on trends for the 2014 smart wearables market from a consumer standpoint. Now, as we put on our app developer hats, we look at the report from a developer point of view.

And its not a pretty picture. Koru reports that they expect a “jungle of wearable app platforms” with the sports app platform being a “real land grab.” So, as with other potential app markets including smart TVs and gaming consoles, each manufacturer will create its on little app market fiefdom which adds another hurdle for developers to try to jump through.

The smart TV manufacturers have the right idea to combat app market fractionalization, offering a unified “build once and run everywhere in the Smart TV Alliance ecosystem” solution, however they can do this because there are relatively few players in the TV sector, and we expect many more players in the smart wearables sector, based on the lower barrier of entry.

So what’s an app developer to do? You do the same thing as you do with the current smart phone landscape. Develop for the major players and take the rest on a case by case basis.