Earlier this year I did a blog post on wearable device market and also created a snapshot diagram of some popular wearable devices. Since then the market has exploded and now there are over 100s of wearable devices out there. Sometimes it is difficult to keep pace with all the new devices that are coming up but there is lot of buzz in the market with Apple launching its maiden watch.

Why will I use a smart watch?

Let us first compare a smart watch with a smart phone – since it is in some way a step-down version of phone in terms of size and features. Today, consuming information on phone is a 5-step process –

1. Take out the phone from pocket
2. Activate the phone
3. Press the unlock button
4. Type in your security code
5. Open the relevant application

If you are looking for extremely quick information consumption, these steps on phone get in the way. This is where I feel lies the most critical utility of smart watches. Smart watches will serve as extremely rapid information consumption devices.

And that will be my most common use case. I will use it for notification services, calendar services and any other information that I want to consume rapidly – faster than I can do today with phone.

I have frequent need to locate my keys, wallet and my phone. Yes, I do. I expect my watch to act as a locator. And there are already watches like Filip that help locate your kids. I am not a fitness enthusiast but I can understand how smart watches can help with health tracking and provide rapid information about your health data.

I expect future smart watch applications to provide applications based on user profile and certain set of rapid information consumption. A traveler profile – using weather, appointment, flight status notifications or a busy executive profile or a fitness profile. All of them consuming relevant information in the quickest possible way.