This makes it clear that Apple Watch isn't the kind of category creator like iPhone, but rather like Apple TV.
Clear as mud maybe.
>The Apple Watch has sold more units in the first nine weeks following its launch than either the iPhone or iPad did at the same point after their respective releases, Apple CFO Luca Maestri said on Tuesday.
[1] http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/07/21/apple-watch-sales-...
[1] http://qz.com/410027/apple-watch-orders-fell-sharply-after-t...
> On the Watch, our June sales were higher than April or May. I realize that’s very different than some of what’s being written, but June sales were the highest. The Watch had a more of a back-ended kind of skewing.
A lot of people are taking the "wait and see" approach to the watch, a lot of reviews said to wait for v2, and they don't really have their developer ecosystem in order yet.
If the results still look like this in, say, October 2016, then I think we can say the conclusion is clear.
What's wrong with it?
For starters, it's no-go for left-handed people. If you put the watch on your right hand, the controls are all on the arm side, rather than the hand side of the watch. On a normal watch that's not a big deal because you barely access the controls. The solution then is to turn the watch upside down, but then the controls are still awkward and since they made the strange decision not to center the control. One wonders why they went with "watch" controls at all.
Second, it's not really a watch, is it? It's a lot more than a watch. A watch for me is mostly a fashion accessory. But these things are ugly. I find it very strange that Angela Ahrendts from Burberry is in charge of retail, but they didn't do what Burberry does... get watch companies to make the watches and then tack on their logo. I would love a Burberry type watch (despite my watchmaker friend telling me how much crap they are), which, by the way, has many interactive features with my iPhone. But what Apple offered was an ugly, clunky, underpowered second screen that I have to constantly charge.
All that said, I think they might figure out how to make a good Apple Watch (as long as they don't treat it like they've treated the Apple TV, which IMHO, has gone backward with each version -- give me local storage!).
In all seriousness, watches are generally worn on the non-dominant hand. I'm not really sure why that is, I only know for me wearing a watch on my left hand leads to inconvenience and scratches.
But not all left-handed people are alike. Some of us write "hook" style, and some of us write basically like a mirror image of a right hander; and from what I've read it is correlated to whether we are right-brained or left-brained. So maybe that also makes a difference in whether a watch on our left hand makes sense.
Often after not using the product long enough to see if it's really a problem. Or, perhaps to discover what really is there (as opposed to what seems to be missing). These people -- quite astonishingly -- seem to not appreciate how much testing and prototyping Apple does with new product categories.
And then, to denounce the product as likely-to-fail in tech forums due to their personal lack of interest.
Such people are trying to answer an aggregate market question, with weakly-informed personal tech prejudices.
Anyway, this mode of reasoning has proved to be quite misleading; it has missed the boat on every major Apple product category. So yes, I think these observations don't really move the conversation forward.
In any case, being a non-starter for left-handed people won't hurt the product much. Neither your personal opinion nor mine are important; data about the overall market is what you want to look at.
And Other Products 2015 explicitly does include Beats Electronics.
And wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beats_Electronics) says that Beats revenue in 2013 was $1.5 billion.
If all that is right -- and it may not be -- then that implies that Beats + Apple Watch < $1b revenue, which would indicate that something is very wrong. Indeed, it would imply that something is SO wrong that I doubt I have the facts above correct.
EDIT: Duh, thanks thedaveoflife, obviously the $1.5b for 2013 Beats is an annual number, not a quarterly one. And of course the iPod numbers are presumably shrinking. That explains it.
The Watch is only first generation so the benefits will increase. The first generation iPhone didn't have a camera, for example. The current Watch is a tethered device.
Selling the health and safety benefits of a wearable shouldn't be too hard for Apple and Google.
- The iPod enabled you to take your music with you in a much more polished and convenient form factor (sorry, Rio).
- The iPhone enabled you to have much more functional mobile experience (in a much more polished and convenient form factor... sorry, Blackberry).
- The MacBook Pro... "
- The Apple Watch enables you to... ... what? I'm honestly asking.
You can't physically put a bigger screen on your wrist. No one has come up with a convenient input device for interacting with it. Sure, battery, processing power, and connectivity will improve as hardware does. But none of those change the basic proposition. What is the problem that it solves?
Continuous health monitoring is helpful, but I think obesity statistics bear out how much people generally care about their own health.
I can see an alternate past where the iPhone was instead a watch, and now we're all communicating via watches (albeit those first few generations would have been bracelets). But competing against an entrenched surfeit of cell phone screens? I just don't see it.
(Side argument familiar to Tesla owners: also, now you have tech curve depreciation is what was formerly a more value-retaining object, if you're thinking of just using it as a watch)
You should have a look at the size of the fitness sector. We fatsos might care about our health intermittently, but we tend to periodically overspend desperately trying to catch up. If Apple can persuade me that the iWatch will make me lose weight all the time, I'm happy to hand them my life savings.
I personally think the watch is pointless until it remains a dumb sensor hub (and it stays at a luxury price point), but being the central point for overall health monitoring is the killer spot for wearables. Sport, medical and insurance companies will be on it in seconds, followed by child-safety, elder care, entertainment, payment, the lot. Smartphones will look clumsy in comparison.
(edit to answer your enabling question: if it becomes the focal point for continuous health monitoring, it enables me to know exactly what's going on in my body at all times without having to see a doctor and book exams.)
Here's a pic, the only thing finished :-) https://h4labs.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/awards.png
The safety aspect is also huge. "Help I've fallen and I can't get up"... or you're in a car accident or seriously injured...
Your watch is always on you. Not true yet because it might be charging. :-(
Health gamification is a shift, but I don't see it being a major shift without incentives being tied to it. As the story went on the Prius, one of the biggest impacts in testing was putting an instantaneous MPG display on the dash. And driving habits suddenly change.
But there's a short term financial incentive there. I'd argue that people just don't fundamentally think about their health that way. That this soft drink today will cost me $x on average 30 years from now by increasing my risk for something? Does not compute.
> I think obesity statistics bear out how much people generally care about their own health.
I was surprised at how quickly and readily I started going along with my watch's insistence to get up off my butt and walk around from time to time. I don't know why I obey my watch when that's something I should be doing on my own, but I'm no longer neglectful about it. Also, don't underestimate the value of gamification. I now get points and awards for standing throughout the day, walking lots, and exercising. It's dumb and I have no excuse for not doing those things without my watch pestering and then rewarding me. And yet, now I'm walking more.
But back to the notifications. I've said this here before, but I was amazed at the silent navigation feature. Whenever I request a route through Apple Maps (on my phone or my watch) and start it, I can put my phone in my pocket and start walking. When I get to an intersection, my watch gives one series of taps if I'm supposed to turn left and a different one if I should turn right. I can walk through sketchy neighborhoods with my head held high, without wearing the "I'm lost - rob me!" signal of hunching over my phone. I just keep moving until it tells me to change direction. I swear, it's like a superpower. I'm not even kidding.
And maybe that's my final answer: The Apple Watch enables you to... project the Internet onto reality. You can get much of the same effect with phone apps, but a phone doesn't have the intimacy to really make the bridge between your data and the outside world. On paper it doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but after wearing it around for a little while I'd sure hate to give it up.
I think that's going to come down to insurance involvement. And God knows how that ends up given the innumerable potential deals that could be made.
> On notifications
I do agree on that. Maybe another way of phrasing it is "It enables you to not take out your phone." Which is no small thing in a lot of circumstances.
The only issue here is... doing that well is UI. I think history teaches us that if there's one thing third party software is terrible at then it's interface.