I think the key difference is that Sony and Android both approached the watch as a smaller phone. You can play angry birds on it, and you can play music, and shop online and do everything that a phone can. In that sense they haven't built a new device, they built a miniature phone with a wristband.

So whatever Apple is building, it's definitely not an "also-ran" because the category doesn't exist yet. Whatever wins this category will look and feel markedly different from a smartphone, just like how the first real smartphones looked and felt different from their predecessor "smart"phones like the razr and blackberry.

Whether Apple can bring a viable product to the market remains to be seen.