Time's Up for Smart Watches

Smart Watches, which received data via a one-way wireless service, have been discontinued, according to a blog posting by a program manager for the MSN Direct service used by the watches. This marks the end of Microsoft’s first attempt to build a service business around consumer electronics, but both the online service and the platform created for the watches continue.

Lack of Demand

Smart Watches were the first product to be based on Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT), a platform developed by Microsoft to enable small, inexpensive devices to receive data wirelessly. Announced in 2003, SPOT included an embedded OS (now called the .NET Micro Framework) built by Microsoft Research and a receiver that could accept wireless data feeds over an unused part of the FM radio band (similar to how text pagers work). Users would subscribe to the associated service, MSN Direct, and choose from various types of information they wanted to receive, such as sports scores, news headlines and summaries, stock quotes, travel headlines and updates, movie times, and weather reports. Microsoft proposed several types of devices that could be built on SPOT, including watches, alarm clocks, and refrigerator magnets.