What’s Up with the Apple Watch?
The Apple Watch is a sort of confusing product. It’s part technology and part jewelry, mostly thanks to a $10,000 offering, but the functional base of the device seems misguided.
Apple has sold more than 700 million iPhones since its introduction and laptops, desktops, and iPads have all seen slowing sales as the market changes and the iPad market seems to be saturated. Apple needs to sell iPhones, they have done an incredible job marketing the product after basically creating the smartphone market, and Apple has achieved an incredible slice of the market. Apple is where it is today because of the iPhone.
Will the Apple Watch Change How We Look at Smartwatches?
The function of the Apple Watch and most of the smartwatches coming on the market presently seems to be to supplement a smartphone to allow users to actually use their smartphone less. But the smartwatch requires a phone connected by bluetooth in order to function, so it cannot possibly simplify our relationship with technology. A smartwatch as a replacement for a smartphone does seem more and more realistic now, and it’s really only a matter of time until there is a functional smart-watch-phone product. But right now, it’s difficult to see what kind of splash the Apple Watch will make for its namesake company.
Will embracing the Apple Watch negate customers’ dependence on the iPhones and their focus on always having the top of the line model? With phones spending more time in peoples’ pockets, will the markets fascination with the most current smartphones wane in favor of a focus on smartwatches? Apple defined the tablet market with the release of the iPad, and was crucial to the world’s introduction to smartphones with the first iPhone, could they do the same thing with the Apple Watch?
Other competitors in the market based on android os have only really been interesting to early adopters and have yet to see mass adoption. The Apple Watch could change this or blend into the crowd. Unlike Apple’s introduction of the iPhone and iPad, there are already plenty of entrants in the market and the Apple Watch lacks any stand out features in comparison. An 18 hour battery life that only assumes 45 minutes of app use isn’t making it stand out from the crowd. Will the Apple Watch end up being more of a burden than a convenience, or can it change the way that people look at smartwatches? We’ll see.
Also, why the hell isn’t it called the iWatch? or the iTime or something? Why change now?
Photo Credit: http://www.redmondpie.com/apple-watch-can-store-and-play-music-over-bluetooth-headphones-without-requiring-iphone/
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