Naina Khedekar

Within a month, the Samsung Galaxy Gear has gone from expensive to bargain. The wearable's price was slashed twice and with this latest drop, it's now available for close to Rs 15,000. Launched at Rs 22,990, the Galaxy Gear saw an overall price drop of Rs 7,700 and is now selling for Rs 15,290.

Undoubtedly, the move is to increase the struggling sales figures of the not-so-popular smartwatch and could end up revitalising the sales figures. After all, the unjustifiable, hefty price tag was one of the biggest sore points as we saw in our Galaxy Gear review. However, with the double price cuts, things are looking much better.

For one, the Gear will compete with Sony’s Smartwatch 2 that is priced around Rs 12,800. Now that the price gap has been whittled down, Samsung has a much better chance of outselling Sony's offering. That's because the Galaxy Gear has a lot more functionality out of the box than Sony’s smartwatch. With the camera and the ability to answer and make calls, the Gear is like a second phone and thus brings a lot more utility for its price. But all is not yet well for the Samsung smartwatch.

Samsung has steadily increased the functionality of the Gear, which was frankly very limited at launch. It is now capable of showing users notifications from all apps on their phone. As we saw in our review, the Gear adds to the smartphone experience very well. The bigger question is whether Samsung can add more support for the Gear. The issue of non-compatibility with most Samsung phones let alone other Android phones (with the exception of the Note 3, Galaxy S4, S4 mini and S3) is still a big disadvantage. If the company couples the most recent price cut with wider compatibility, that may make the real difference in the sales figure. After all no one wants to be locked in to a particular brand, even if that's Samsung, the world leader when it comes to smartphones.