Yes, it's a wonder that round televisions and monitors aren't more common. Could it be that the square is a much better shape to display data? And that data is the point when you're dealing with a "smartwatch"?
Displaying small pieces of data is the point, and round does just fine at that.
Especially since Apple used a small screen with huge bezels; in fact, like some other rectangular watches, its display uses
less than half of the entire body area facing the user.
Personally I can't wait for the first Android Wear manufacturer to release a square watch in order to compete with the Apple Watch (and trust me...it will happen soon).
Android Wear watches started rectangular.
E.g. the Android Wear LG Watch G above, from June 2014, two months before the Apple Watch. Also, the Samsung Gear Live at the same time. Previously the rectangular Asus Zen watch was also announced.
Whatever the reasoning Apple used, it's obviously working as the Apple Watch IS the smartwatch market right now.
You mean, for iPhone users it is. But they have no other shape choice from Apple.
It's like when Apple only had a 4" screen, and people claimed that was "the perfect size".
Well. We all know what happened once Apple customers had a choice.
Round is skeumorphic, it's a legacy of how the mechanism was created to measure time.
An incredibly ironic comment, considering that a rectangular smartwatch is a small skeuomorph of a larger computer monitor
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Personally, I suspect that the round v square preference is at least partly related to whether or not the buyer prefers analog or digital clock displays. I've run across quite a few younger people these days who have no idea how to read an analog watchface.
In any case, something like 90%+ of wristwatches are round, due to fashion, not physical necessity. Heck, the first clocks were actually square, since they were in town towers.