The elusive mass market
The trouble with the mass market for smart/fitness/watches is that it's elusive in the same sense as bigfoot - the problem is not simply that no-one can find it, but that there's no evidence it actually exists in the first place. There's certainly a relatively small market for real Garmin-style sports trackers. And there seems to be at least some market for stripped-down phones that can be strapped to your wrist. But in terms of people wanting a watch that isn't great at being a watch, isn't smart enough to do useful things, and is just barely competent at counting steps? It's a gimmick that people occasionally decide it's worth chucking 20 quid at. People who actually care about fitness either get a useful tool or, all too commonly, simply don't worry about needing a fancy watch in order to go running. People who don't care about fitness... don't care about fitness, and a £100 watch that occasionally tells them they've been walking or whatever isn't going to change that.
There simply isn't a mass market place for "relatively expensive but not actually very useful watch cum step counter". It either needs to be more useful or less expensive, and both of those markets are already covered and doing about as well as they're ever likely to. In the absence of some killer new feature, continuing to throw the same crap out and expecting it to fare any differently isn't exactly sensible. Especially when their "long life" wearables are still only boasting 30 days use as a basic watch or 3 days of actually doing anything, which somehow manages to be worse than an actual GPS watch.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
