Today, Apple Watch turns two!
“April 24, 2015: It’s time for the official release of the Apple Watch, the wearable device Tim Cook describes as the ‘next chapter in Apple history,'” Luke Dormehl writes for Cult of Mac. “Fans, having endured a seven-month wait since the device’s unveiling at a keynote the previous September, can finally strap an Apple Watch onto their wrists. Behind the scenes, however, this moment been a lot longer in the making.”
“According to the generally accepted account of the sequence of events, the Apple Watch was not just the first new Apple product since the iPad, but the first new product created—from beginning to end—under Tim Cook’s watch,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reported back in December 2015 for Fortune. “Not so, says Creative Strategies’ Tim Bajarin, whose on-and-off relationship with Jobs dates back nearly 35 years. ‘Steve was aware of the Watch,’ Bajarin told an audience of analysts, developers, and venture capitalists Thursday at Glance, an Apple Watch conference in San Francisco. ‘He didn’t nix it as a product.'”
The Apple Watch “marked an attempt by Apple to become more of a luxury company. Going back to the earliest days of Apple, the company had drawn parallels between its computers and aspirational goods like high-end cars,” Dormehl writes. “However, decisions like making a $17,000 Apple Watch Edition and showing off the device at Paris Fashion Week marked a strategy shift that embraced high-end fashion in a way Apple hadn’t overtly done before… With Apple Watch Series 2, the focus on selling the device as a luxury item seems to have been scaled back in favor of a focus on fitness.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Today is the 732nd consecutive day with Apple Watch units on our wrists and we wouldn’t want it any other way. You can have our Apple Watches when you pry them off our cold, dead wrists!
As our very high satisfaction with our Apple Watch Nike+ units attests: These certainly aren’t Apple Watch’s “terrible twos.”
SEE ALSO:
Apple Watch Series 3 coming in second half 2017, sources say – April 5, 2017
The Apple Watch is still the best designed smartwatch – March 14, 2017
The Apple Watch is winning – March 2, 2017
Apple Watch had massive holiday quarter; took nearly 80% share of total smartwatch revenue – February 10, 2017
The Apple Watch ‘WOW’ moment – February 3, 2017
Apple Watch dominates with 63% of worldwide smartwatch market – February 2, 2017
Apple smashes Street; iPhone, Services, Mac and Apple Watch set all-time records – January 31, 2017
Apple Watch has blood on its hands: Pebble is dead – December 7, 2016
Apple Watch has blood on its hands: ‘Microsoft Band’ wearable is dead – October 4, 2016
Computerworld reviews Apple Watch Series 2: It’s time to jump in – September 27, 2016
Ars Technica reviews Apple Watch Series 2: ‘Great experience with very few hiccups’ – September 22, 2016
Mossberg reviews Apple’s watchOS 3: Quicker, easier, and more useful – September 21, 2016
CNET reviews Apple Watch Series 2: ‘The smooth wrist companion it was always meant to be’ – September 14, 2016
WSJ reviews Apple Watch Series 2: ‘Apple Watch finds its purpose in life’ – September 14, 2016
The Verge reviews Apple Watch Series 2: There’s something effortlessly cool about it – September 14, 2016
Apple Watch Series 2: Apple refocuses its smartwatch – September 12, 2016
I doubt the product will survive to it’s 3rd birthday.
They will kill it due to lack of demand.
Hi Jambro
here is a link to Apple Watch market share. Looks like your naysaying is incorrect.
http://fortune.com/2016/09/21/apple-watch-market-share/
dan
From the article:
“What Apple is actually dominating, however, isn’t necessarily a big market. Kantar said that just 4.7% of Americans and 3.2% of those living in Europe’s four biggest markets currently own a smartwatch. In the broader wearables market where smartwatches live, 15.2% of Americans and 8.1% of those living in Europe’s four major markets own such a wearable. And there are no signs of widespread adoption coming anytime soon.”
” IDC’s data, however, found that Apple’s wearables market share stood at just 7% in the second quarter, down from 20.3% market share in the same period last year. IDC added that customers seemed increasingly interested in fitness bands and other “basic wearables” rather than their more expensive smartwatch alternatives.”
The fact that Apple isn’t proud enough of its sales to actually report them to Apple investors tells me that the market is soft and not growing. The fad is slowing.
It will take Apple 5+ years to move past the cylindrical Mac Pro disaster when actual desktop Mac users were vocal early and often in their disgust for the fashionista direction Apple went on what was supposed to be a powerful and adaptable workstation.
Why would one expect more decisive leadership on the Watch? It bombed as a fashion item. It’s never going to be FDA approved as a medical device. So now the Watch is soldiering on as a very expensive fitness tracker and a digital leash for people too self conscious to look at their phones which are with them every second of every day already. In another 3 years Apple will start sorting through the sales data and figure out where they screwed up. Until then, look at all the exciting overpriced bands you can buy at Apple’s fashion boutiques!
Unless as a channel between me and medical team as I age, I don’t see myself ever wanting one or wearing one whether I enjoy it or not.
I was so happy to give up wearing watches in general when I had a non-strapped on way to know the time always close to me, but my understanding is they’ve captured a very significant marketshare that makes Android Wear almost an asterisk, plus sales approaching Rolex and Tag Heuer levels and enough to provoke concern in watch-intensive places like Switzerland.
So I expect them to not only continue with it and all the fetishy band releases (the margins on these must be at least quadruple key), but given miniaturization as a general trend, to eventually release other wearables (and maybe someday “implantables”).
That is far too sensible a post for the fools above I’m afraid who will simply parrot on in their deluded and mischievous re-writing of history no matter what facts and figures tell them. They far prefer to disrupt the discussion rather than add intelligently to it, but will be long gone by the time their inane arguments and ludicrous predictions are no longer defendable. Sadly they will be replaced by a new wave of idiots or simply a change of identity for the present chuckle brothers.
To each their own. I knew immediately that I would want the watch and placed my order the very minute it was possible. I never “got tired of it.” I never forgot to put it on. The watch serves me in ways that constantly surprise, and beyond the fitness features that I use daily and the Siri interface which has performed flawlessly, there are the text alerts that allow me to see and respond to work emergencies even when I am driving and I can’t get to the phone in my pocket. So I can appreciate how the watch is utterly useless to some, many, or even most. But because it doesn’t make sense to you personally doesn’t make it a product failure, or a “mistake.”
I predict your wrong. Regardless of market share, etc. Apple will sell this thing as long as they want, it’s not like they need the cash.
You’re in a jam, bro. Whatcha gonna do when birthday 3 for Apple Watch rolls around and you’re ever more stunningly and inaccurately wrong than you are today?
Chop off your hand? Give yourself an uppercut? Remind yourself just how moronically stupid you have been?
Dumb is dumb, but dumber has a new name today, and that name is Jambro.
My purchases in the past 4 mos: iPad 9.7″ Pro, Apple Watch Stainless Steel Series 2 (upgraded from original sport), AirPods, free Apple TV 4 with DIRECTV now prepaid subscription and a Surface Pro 4 as of yesterday. Apple has my phone, watch and AirPod business.
Why did you but the SP4? Windows all requirement? Desire to use Windows with touch? Or something else?
While I love mine now and would highly recommend one today, it certainly hasn’t been smooth sailing from the beginning. The Apple Watch really only hit its stride once watchOS 3 came out. Prior to that, it was definitely struggling mightily to find its footing and certainly wasn’t a must-have device by any stretch.
Tim Cook hasn’t given up his dream of an Apple Watch on every wrist. Keep dreaming, Tim.