Any predictions for the mobile landscape for next year?

[Dari]

You are overlooking that the watch screen has to be on all the time. Well, perhaps not a must but it is more desirable that way. I do not think LCD can compete on that ground even against S4-level AMOLED - of course on black watch face with white lettering. (burn-in notwithstanding XD )

Maybe the watch OEMs should add that feature where the watch is watching you in order to determine when the screen has to be on. that would be far more efficient whether it's OLED or LCD.

 

[Sweepr]

Does not compute. Alternatives like Exynos, Mediatek, Rockchips et al are bottom-feeders who do not compete with Qualcomm at the high end and this is where the (rumored) problems are. If growth is at the midrange and alternative applications (smartwatches, for example) then Qualcomm will be fine. They are everywhere, even in Apple products.

Exynos competes very well at the high-end. Exynos 7 Octa brought 20nm A57+A53 cores months before the first S810 devices are rumoured to launch and Mali T760MP6 seems to keep up with S805's Adreno 420 (unlike past generations). I expect Samsung to increase the number of markets receiving phones with their own SoCs next year, Exynos Galaxy S6 already showed up in benchmarks.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2407781

 

[desura]

Smart watches are really dumb in a lot of ways. Especially the ones which have gigahertz processors.

IMO the perfect smart watch would be like the cookoo smart watch but with an eink screen.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Smart watches are really dumb in a lot of ways. Especially the ones which have gigahertz processors.

IMO the perfect smart watch would be like the cookoo smart watch but with an eink screen.

I can only see Apple becoming somewhat successful with smartwatches solely because of their luxurious social status branding. The rest of the makers would just simply fail.

 

[vi edit]

I can only see Apple becoming somewhat successful with smartwatches solely because of their luxurious social status branding. The rest of the makers would just simply fail.

Or it could just be that it only works with one brand of phone that just happens to have about half a BILLION devices of that type sold.

Android has competition. Apple doesn't.