Despite a wide selection of smartwatches for men, smaller, fashionable versions designed for women have only recently become available—and their choices are limited

By Theresa Chong | June 26, 2015

MICA's display screen: A curved touch-screen display nearly 40 millimeters diagonally.

Courtesy of Intel and Opening Ceremony.

Small screen size presents the biggest challenge to using—not to mention designing—a smartwatch. This loosely defined term has come to include just about any digital timepiece with a voice- or touch-enabled display. But women's watches, which are traditionally smaller and more delicate than timepieces for men, pose an extra dilemma for smartwatch makers trying to pack fitness monitoring and smartphone functions into a wrist-worn device. As a result, very few smartwatches have been designed specifically to appeal to a woman's lifestyle needs or fashion sense.

And yet women outnumber men as prospective buyers of wearable fitness devices, according to a 2014 study by the research firm NPD Group. That sense of an untapped market may explain why a handful of manufacturers have begun designing smartwatches for women in a way that extends beyond swapping out different colored bands on gender-neutral devices. As a result, two different smartwatch makers have taken two very different approaches to reach out to women interested in the technology.

A poll conducted by Intel's New Devices Group indicated that women prefer to exude fashion—not technology—with what they wear. With that benchmark, Intel and designers at the fashion shop Opening Ceremony crafted a high-tech accessory they've called MICA (short for My Intelligent Communication Accessory). Retailing at $495, MICA looks like a stylish bracelet and behaves like a smartwatch. Pearls and a precious stone adorn the bracelet, which comes in black or white and is made of water snake skin. A curved-sapphire touch-screen display, reaching nearly 40 millimeters diagonally, wraps around the bracelet's underside. "We engineers would like to have electronics laid out on a flat surface," says Ayse Ildeniz, vice president of Intel's New Devices Group and general manager of strategy and business development. Stretching electronics across a smartwatch's bent surface inherently amplifies its surface area, resulting in a bulkier design, she says. Because some women prefer chunky jewelry, MICA's bulky appearance blends well with some fashion trends.