Lessons learned from Microsoft’s pioneering—and standalone—smartwatches

One of the perceived problems with today’s crop of smartwatches is that in addition to being overpriced, battery hungry, and of limited utility, none of them are standalone devices. Today’s smartwatch is merely a smartphone accessory, a proxy for the larger gadget’s notifications and alerts.

But there was a time when the smartwatch was an independent, standalone device. As is so often the case in the history of computing, these early, pioneering smartwatches were powered by Microsoft technology.

In the early 2000s, Microsoft envisaged a range of smart devices, from watches to coffee makers, all imbued with Smart Personal Object Technology (SPOT)—a kind of Internet of Things without using the actual Internet. Instead of the current mix of 3G/4G, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth that today’s smartwatches use to communicate with the world, SPOT devices used good old-fashioned FM radio.

Microsoft called the service behind this tech “MSN Direct.” A range of information channels was broadcast, including national data (stock prices, major news events), local data (weather, movie times), and even personal notification data (new messages on the MSN Messenger instant messaging service, Outlook calendar appointments). And in a move that may seem peculiar today, the service wasn’t free; MSN Direct was a $60/year subscription.

The first SPOT devices were smartwatches. They weren’t made by Microsoft but by established watch companies. When MSN Direct was first announced at CES 2003, Citizen, Fossil, and Suunto were all on board to make SPOT watches, and they were later joined by Swatch and Tissot.

Because MSN Direct was only responsible for part of the watch’s functionality, various manufacturers could add their own functionality and gimmicks. Swatch’s Paparazzi, for example, supported the company’s silly “Internet time” that divides the day into 1,000 “beats” and abandons timezones. The Tissot High T included a sapphire face that was touch-sensitive. Some Suunto models included heart rate sensors and water resistance down to 100 meters.

It’s fair to say that these watches didn’t set the world on fire. There were complaints about the prices (from $150 for the Swatch Paparazzi up to $725 for the Tissot High T) and the battery life (typically four to five days). Of course, compared to the current crop of smartwatches, four days of battery life would be regarded as almost miraculous. And, as they remain today, these early smartwatches were bulky. Their appeal was also limited as Microsoft never deployed MSN Direct outside North America.

Most of all, however, the watches’ standalone nature became the real problem. The watch form factor is tremendously limiting, and SPOT devices provided no way of transcending those limitations. Sure, your SPOT watch might tell you that you got a message on MSN Messenger—but it offered no way of doing anything about it.

Within a few years, smartphones would start to become widespread. Equipped with 3G data rather than one-way FM radio, large color screens instead of tiny monochrome ones, and nice on-screen keyboards instead of a pair of tiny buttons, smartphones could do everything that the smartwatches could do, and much more. Instead of a few words of a news headline, full stories could be pulled up from the Web. Rather than merely being told that someone had sent you a message, with a smartphone you could send a message right back.

Microsoft did expand SPOT’s reach beyond watches; Garmin added MSN Direct support to some of its GPS units so that they could receive traffic and map updates, and Melitta released a coffee maker which displayed weather information. But the idea never really caught on. SPOT watches were discontinued in 2008, and MSN Direct was last broadcast on December 31, 2011.