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Despite some opining that you really don't need a smartwatch, it's a sector that's experienced robust global growth. Samsung, however, is moving in the opposite direction and has something of a market share issue in the smartwatch space. A recent report shows a precipitous drop of 28% of market cap for the Korean manufacturer, despite big growth amongst many of its competitors, and one of the main reasons Samsung is seeing that huge drop off is a lack of innovation.
Part of the appeal of wearables is their novelty; they're still viewed to some extent as a new, gadget-y product, and a big reason the smartwatch market is thriving is that people are looking for cutting-edge health and sleep tracking features. That means that if a new iteration of an established watch isn't packing fun, eye-catching new features, adoption is going to slow, and that's exactly the problem Samsung is running into with the Galaxy Watch 9, which, judging from Android Headline's early previews, looks nearly indistinguishable from the Galaxy Watch 8. Same round face, same sensors underneath, and a lack of innovation, really.
The Galaxy Watch 9 is the new 8
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If you put the press images from the Android Headlines story alongside photos of the Galaxy Watch 8, you'd be hard-pressed to tell them apart. Visually, they're nearly identical, with a circular display mounted on a slightly larger, oblong base. The Galaxy Watch has never had a particularly stand-out presentation visually, and the 9 appears to extend that trend, looking rather bland and functional (something emphasized by the two colors it will reportedly be available in, Cream and Graphite). The sensors on the underside of the watch also appear to be the same hardware built into the Watch 8, Samsung's BioActive sensor array, which clusters a number of health sensors into a single module.
There are likely to be some upgraded internals, as Samsung has said, according to Android Headlines, it will use Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear Elite chip in upcoming smartwatches. Qualcomm is touting the Wear Elite as the first "NPU-powered wearable platform," and the focus is clearly heavily on AI while also delivering improved performance and battery life. That said, it looks like it'll come in the same two sizes as previous generations, 40MM and 44MM, and Samsung will really need some kind of headline-grabbing feature if it aims to claw back some of that lost market share.