Samsung says it has moved 800,000 of its widely panned Galaxy Gear smartwatches. At least, that's the word from Reuters.

It's a little hard to tell whether that number refers to watches actually sold to paying customers or merely shipped to retailers. (Samsung didn't immediately respond to our efforts to clarify the matter.)* Either way, the figure feels like it came from the mouth of Dr. Evil.

For an electronics mega-giant working to show it can pioneer a new category of gadget, boasting about 800,000 smartwatches is about as impressive as a super-villian trying to extort one million dollars from the governments of the world. It's not nothing. But it's certainly "meh."

Samsung's motive for putting a number out at all isn't hard to understand. WIRED's Christina Bonnington was hardly alone in her unenthusiastic review of the Galaxy Gear, which she rated a 4 out of 10. "It’s a noble attempt at innovation," she writes. "But for the most part, the end result is too clunky and awkward for true appeal beyond being a brief conversation piece on your wrist." Samsung's figure is meant to show that whatever snooty tech pundits say, people are gravitating to the Gear.

The company has staked a lot of public relations capital to the Gear's success. As rumors of arch-rival Apple's own smartwatch sputter along, Samsung already has a real-life device for sale. As the first big corporate mover to bring a wearable smart device to the mass market, the Korean conglomerate finally gets to call itself the real category innovator.

The problem is that innovation only means something if a new technology or design effects genuine change. And it's not clear what the Galaxy Gear really changes. In her assessment not just of the Gear but the whole smartwatch category to date, Rachel Metz of Technology Review writes: "After trying some smart watches, I’ve determined that a good one will need to be more than just reliable and simple to use – it will have to learn when and how to bother me." Simply migrating your smartphone's interruptions to a your wrist doesn't add much value. It's the same annoyances on a smaller screen.

At this point, the smartwatch is a category getting ahead of itself. It's a device that precedes its purpose. But that's not necessarily a problem. No one really knew what Twitter was for when it started, either.

"Galaxy Gear just isn’t something most folks need," Bonnington writes. "It’s not even something I wanted to keep on my wrist all day. While the feature set is more advanced than any other smartwatch, the technology and its uses are clearly in their infancy."

Maybe sales will spike when the grown-up version arrives. Until then, a new gadget with no clear purpose will always be a hard sell.

Update: "We’ve received positive feedback on the Samsung Galaxy Gear from consumers globally. We’ve sold 800,000 in two months," reads Samsung's official statement. "Note this number refers to shipments," a spokeswoman adds.