Smart Watch Manager
Project Result
Samsung is one the pioneers to develop Smartphones. It was 2014 where people used to wear analog watches and smart watches were that popular. Samsung Research and development regarding watch usability creates a new dimension to use smartwatch as a health tracker. We had a team of 15 people who helped to develop Samsung's first generation smart watch and release to market. Soon it was the top 3 companies of developing smart watches and holds more than 15% market share.
Samsung smart watch has unique health tracking sensors and robust Samsung health application helps users to track his/her different activity automatically and sync with Samsung Cloud and Phone storage which are not present in some competitor vendor or not as sophisticated as Samsung health.
Smart watches can sync and forward phone activity like call, message, music automatically by it's robust manager app on the phone. Users can control music, call from a smart watch and track the phone from when it's lost by using find my mobile which are not present in most of the smart watch vendors.
In that year, Apple share drops 10% as Samsung makes its market share to double.
Business Implications
Samsung has created a new business scope by launching the smart watch which contributed it's annual growth. Users from traditional watches have moved to Samsung smart watch and it increases overall Samsung market share.
People are thinking of smart watches as a health tracking device and more companies within the health ecosystems like insurance, hospitals, medical technology developers are more interested in Samsung wearable technology.
Many athletic clubs use Samsung smart watches to track the activity and measure performance of every athlete.
Samsung smart watches are becoming the part of other business addons. Like many insurance companies/hospitals suggested to their patients over 70 years of age to use Samsung smart watches to track heart condition by using ECG, pulse etc remotely. This is a growing market and Samsung is becoming a big player.
Difficulty of the Project
Creating new ecosystems with smart watches was not an easy job. Although it was a growing trend, it was difficult to make people understand about the new smart. So we have created a complete device and health services so that users will feel that smart watches are more than a tool to see the current time, but also a complete package of maximum replication of phone services as well as health services.
In the traditional watch or even most of the smartwatch does not have essential sensors like oximeter, ECG and heart rate. We have to build a better smart watch with features which can track health data and sync with the cloud. So, we had to optimize the algorithm with good quality of hardware so that smart watches can get accurate data and seamless connectivity with phones to sync call, message, email and media information. Samsung cloud plays an important role in tracking data over the network remotely so that people can monitor elderly people's health and take necessary actions on time.
Collaborations with hardware, cloud and OS, product planning and marketing team with synced information to meet the deadline of releasing IPA was also a difficult job.
Innovative& Unique Methodology
Samsung has an innovative own Tizen operating system run on customized chipset with cutting edge sensor technology optimized for smart watches. For establishing connection with phones we have used Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. We have used Samsung Accessory Protocol (SAP) as communication protocol between provider at phone side and consumer at Smart watch side.
All the features are communicated as provider service like call, message, email, findMyPhone at phone side and associate consumer at watch side are always waiting to get notifications and update from phone. This unique methodology later converted to IOTIVITY protocol where smartwatch can work as a Internet Of Things (IOT) device. This protocol extends the usability of smart watches to take request and response from other devices like light, fan, tv, refrigerator and sync data to the cloud. With this protocol, smart watches can control smart home, office and infotainment.
I have proposed an idea - "single sign on in IOTivity protocol" and Samsung Management rewarded my idea. Later single sign on is integrated in all the services that Samsung offer.
News and Published Public Materials
https://www.wsj.com/articles/kaiser-permanente-bets-on-smartwatches-to-lower-costs-11578565801
https://www.zdnet.com/article/samsung-smartthings-harman-to-collaborate-on-iot-acceleration/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/422229/smart-wearable-bands-market-share-companies/
https://www.sammobile.com/2017/02/08/samsung-smartwatch-market-share-stood-at-15-during-2016/
https://www.postscapes.com/companies/#software
Image source : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.android.app.watchmanager&hl=en&gl=US
and https://apps.apple.com/us/app/samsung-galaxy-watch-gear-s/id1117310635