Apple iWatch, beware. Samsung plans to clock you

Apple iWatch, beware. Samsung plans to clock you
Now that Samsung has said it's working on a high-tech watch, one that presumably will pack smartphone features, 2013 could shape up as the year of smartwatch wars, with longtime foes Apple and Samsung leading the battle. The motivation, Wall Street analysts argue, is that the biggies need another act as growth of smartphones sales are already slowing. Could smartwatches become that act? It might sound like a long shot; many people already are abandoning watches and relying on their phones instead. And in an age of ever-expanding phone screens, a device for the wrist comes with obvious limitations. Yet Samsung is publicly prepping for this fight. Apple has been mum amid a slew of reports that it has a team in Cupertino, Calif., working on the iWatch, or whatever it might be called. Startup Pebble, meanwhile, has already gained a big fan base, showing that an app-filled watch that's linked to a smartphone certainly has some eager customers.For Samsung, however, this is hardly new terrain. Go back in Samsung history -- to the heady days of 1999 -- and you'll find that Samsung was already pushing a Dick Tracy-like device. Why? Because the wireless market was "saturated." Here's Samsung's press release about its first watch phone, the SPH-WP10:The SPH-WP10 is Samsung's first product developed as part of a market segmentation strategy designed to respond to the nearly saturated domestic market for wireless handsets. The new product signals new marketing approaches by domestic manufacturers to target specific generations of mobile telecommunications service users. At the very end of the announcement, the company adds: "Samsung officials expect their new watch phone to be a big hit with the youth market."With 90 minutes of talk time, a design that would probably get you an extra-special pat down when going through airport security, and a $700 price tag, the SPH-WP10 obviously did not set the world (or the youth market) on fire. Samsung tried again a decade later with the S9110, a much more svelte design that had nearly three times the talk time of the SPH-WP10, but still cost more than $600. Surprisingly, it never made it to the U.S., and was only available in France. Samsung's belief that the domestic handset market was "nearly saturated" was off too. That market was disrupted by the advent of smartphones, a market that's grown so fast, and so large, that it overtook feature phones in worldwide sales in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to IDC. So why return to a product genre that failed to catch on twice, and as recently as four years ago? Things have changed, and so has Samsung.In 1998 -- the year before its first watch-phone -- Samsung had just 60,000 employees and made $16.6 billion in revenue in the U.S. Now it has 236,000 employees, and did more than $188 billion in sales last year alone. Smartphones and other mobile devices made up nearly half of that. A brief history of smartwatches (picture...See full gallery1 - 4 / 20NextPrevOn the business side, analysts now guesstimate that there's about $56 billion a year to be made (or taken away from) in the watch market. Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst with The NPD Group, suggests it might be $40 billion, and says that market has been falling since 2006, right before smartphone popularity exploded. "The watch business took a double whammy. It took a hit in functionality from smartphones, and then another from the economy," Cohen told CNET.The new hope, perhaps, is that the money comes on top of what people spend on smartphones, not instead of them. And that market could be even bigger if you figure that people would buy them instead of MP3 players and other small, portable electronics, says Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi.That very idea is something that sets the modern-day smartwatch apart from Samsung's past, failed efforts. Consumers don't necessarily want a mashup of a phone and watch with limited capabilities. But a watch that promises to enhance the smartphone experience is an easier sell. More recently, companies have run with that idea, shying away from trying to shoehorn the phone inside a watch, choosing instead to link up to people's smartphones using Bluetooth. There's good reason for that strategy. You can run big, beautiful apps on the phone, taking advantage of its large display, powerful processor, and always-on data connection, but keep what you do on the watch limited to things that suit the smaller size. So while playing Real Racing 3 on the watch may not be a good idea, quickly glancing over to see a text message is more convenient. Smartwatch maker Pebble did this to create a small device with a handful of bite-size apps, but where most of the heavy lifting is happening on the phone. Does everyone now have a Pebble? No, but its Kickstarter campaign very quickly raised more than $10 million, well beyond the upstart's expectations. That brings us to Apple, which is reportedly working on its own wearable device to release later this year. How exactly it will fit in with Apple's ecosystem is unclear, specifically because the big assumption is that it will be able to run iOS apps, just like the iPhone and iPod Touch. The only problem with that theory is Apple's track record of segregating its cheaper, smaller devices with completely different software.The iPod Nano, which has been the shining example of where Apple's watch efforts would ascend from, runs a special operating system. The latest version may look a bit like the iOS that Apple uses on the iPhone and iPad, but there's no way to expand its features through something like the App Store. And it's still entirely dependent on Apple's iTunes desktop software to get it up and running. If Apple's watch will be a companion to a smartphone or a computer, it could follow suit.Samsung's modus operandi is to try things out and see what sticks.<br />But Apple has some serious incentive to veer from that strategy and expand the iOS platform, said Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes. In a note to investors last month, Reitzes noted that the firm was tracking a high rate of customers coming back to buy these types of devices every few years, and by broadening iOS, Apple could set up a nice recurring business -- kind of like subscriptions. "We believe that Apple actually has recurring revenue in the 40 percent range overall -- much higher than most likely believe," Reitzes said. "If the company can continue to add new products and services -- the repeating nature should only grow."Therein lies one of the differences between Apple and Samsung though. Where Apple has shown high reservation in expanding its product lines (see the iPhone and iPad as the most recent example of that) and marketed them based on that very simplicity, Samsung's modus operandi is to try things out and see what sticks. It may have some strange side effects like featuritis and devices that just don't take off, but that very strategy has led to seemingly improbable successes like the Galaxy Note. Whether it will pay off with something you strap to your wrist, well, only time will tell.This content is rated TV-MA, and is for viewers 18 years or older. Are you of age?YesNoSorry, you are not old enough to view this content.Play

Jet lag- There's an app for that

Jet lag? There's an app for that
Whether you're travelling for business or pleasure, jet lag can cause a serious crimp in your plans, knocking you out with tiredness when you want to be awake and keeping you wide awake when you want to be asleep â€" and, for those who travel a lot, it can cause depression.But a new app developed by researchers at the University of Michigan could seriously speed up the recovery time.Jet lag is caused when the body's circadian rhythm becomes out of sync with the time zone. By carefully exposing the jet lag sufferer to certain types of light during certain times of the day, the jet lag recovery time can be cut right down."Overcoming jet lag is fundamentally a maths problem and we've calculated the optimal way of doing it," said Danny Forger, a professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. "We're certainly not the first people to offer advice about this, but our predictions show the best and quickest ways to adjust across time zones."The app, called Entrain, is based on entrainment, or realigning the circadian rhythm with the time of day. Forger and Yale doctoral student Kirill Serkh worked on the idea that light is the strongest signal to regulate circadian rhythms.It involves creating a schedule where the sufferer seeks certain types of light for a block of time each day. For one block of time, they are to spend time in bright, outdoors-style light, such as a therapeutic lightbox, and for the second block of time, the dimmest light possible. You do not have to be asleep during this time, and you can block out blue wavelength light â€" the type of light most associated with daylight â€" by wearing pink-tinted glasses.The user will need to enter a few details into the app â€" such as the typical hours of light and darkness in their "home" timezone, where they are travelling to and for how long, as well as the brightest light they expect to spend the most time in. The app will then calculate a plan for your light exposure and how long it ought to take you to readjust.The researchers illustrate this with a circle representing the circadian rhythm, with the central point being the time of day when your body is at its lowest temperature, around two hours before you wake up. When you have jet lag, that time changes drastically â€" you could be at your lowest temperature at 3pm. "The way other approaches get these points to line up again is by inching along on the outside of the circle, sometimes pushing you towards and sometimes pulling you away from the target. But our schedules can just cut through the middle," said Olivia Walch, a mathematics doctoral student who built the app. "This is almost like a body hack to get yourself entrained faster."The full study can be read online in the journal PLOS Computational Biology. Entrain is available for free from the iTunes app store.

Apple TV set may not launch until 2014, says analyst

Apple TV set may not launch until 2014, says analyst
Consumers waiting for a TV set from Apple may have to sit tight for a couple more years.Apple won't launch any type of TV this year, says J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz. Instead, the company is likely to build up to such a product in two separate phases.First, Apple would expand its current TV box by launching a more advanced set-top module sometime in 2013 at the earliest. Then the company could unveil a full-blown TV with a display and speakers in 2014 or later, the analyst said in a research note released today.Why no Apple TV sooner than 2014? Moskowitz doesn't think the company would turn enough of a profit in the market as it currently stands."We believe that the economics of the TV industry are strained, despite there being suitable offerings from the likes of Sony, Sharp, and Samsung," the analyst said. "Overall, we would be surprised to see Apple enter a new market unless the value proposition could support double-digit operating margins. In TVs, that bogey is rather elusive, in our view."Further, for customers to shell out money for a pricey Apple TV, the typical user interface would have to be redesigned, TV programs and digital content would need to be better integrated, and voice and gesture controls would have to be part of the package."Until such time, we are skeptical that end customers would be willing to pay the Apple premium for a TV," Moskowitz added. "Despite our current skepticism, we think that if any company can radically alter the TV landscape, it is Apple."Related storiesApple TV set chatter heats up with rumored content talksApple TV sets will be mighty pricey, analyst saysCNET review: Apple TV (2012)So, what might Apple focus on next?The company could finally dive into the world of mobile payments, aka near-field communications.Moskowitz believes Apple may unveil a mobile payment system, which J.P. Morgan has dubbed "iPay." Such a system would tap into NFC-enabled smartphones and tablets to let Apple users pay for goods and services on the go.So far, the necessary NFC hardware has popped up in Android phones and is slated for a variety of other devices. Apple has been typically mum about whether it might adopt the mobile payments technology, but reports have suggested the next iPhone could include NFC. Apple has filed a patent application that would let iTunes users send purchases as gifts through NFC or e-mail, according to Patently Apple.