750,000 smartwatches sold in the UK, but can we trust that number?

Ofcom has reported that around three per cent of UK households claim to own a smartwatch.

The number, which has been detailed in Ofcom's 2015 Communications Market Report, on the surface shows that people in the UK have embraced the "quantified self" in huge numbers: around 750,000. 

Although Ofcom has included smartwatches for the first time in its monitoring, the government agency acknowledges that the research not only happened before the launch of the Apple Watch in the UK, but also included a fairly woolly description of a smartwatch, that could have been easily misinterpreted. 

"Our explanation of a smartwatch was 'A wearable computer that provides features in addition to those to be expected of a watch,'" a spokeswomen for Ofcom told Pocket-lint.

"Typically they are connected wirelessly to a mobile phone and display incoming messages, call status and provide some degree of control over the phone, including call answering and control of audio playback. Other features can include motion sensors, cameras and GPS."

The consumer research was carried out before the Apple Watch went on sale in April 2015, suggesting that 2016's report will give a better understanding of the marketplace.

Other watches on the UK market include those from manufacturers including LG, Motorola and Samsung, which use Android Wear, and Pebble watches, which launched in 2013 and uses PebbleOS.

Ofcom says that it "gave examples such as Pebble, Samsung and Sony, with the Apple Watch due to be released in 2015" when they spoke to people for the research.

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