“Smartwatches are most certainly no longer a fad,” Dan Gallagher writes for Dow Jones Newswires. “Whether their makers can turn them into necessities is the new billion-dollar question. Many billions of dollars, in fact.”
“Apple Inc. alone is estimated to have sold $9.9 billion worth of its Apple Watch in 2018, according to consensus analyst estimates from Visible Alpha. Analysts see this segment rising to more than $15 billion annually for the company in the next two years,” Gallagher writes. “About 51.3 million smartwatches were sold globally in 2018, up 54% from the previous year, according to data from IDC on Tuesday.”
“A large slice of the public still needs convincing, though,” Gallagher writes. “A survey by UBS late last year found 52% of smartphone users saying they are unlikely to purchase a smartwatch. Fortunately, even that still leaves plenty of room for the market to tick upward.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: There is Apple Watch and then there are Apple Watch wannabes, knockoffs, also-rans, and roadkill.
You want a real Apple Watch. If it’s not an Apple Watch, it’s not an Apple Watch.
SEE ALSO:
IDC: Apple No.1 in Q418 worldwide wearables shipments with 16.2 million units, 10.4 million of which were Apple Watches – March 5, 2019
Apple Watch dominates with 51% global smartwatch market share – February 28, 2019
The Apple Watch made me start wearing a watch again. I bought series 1 for the ability to monitor my heart rate during running.
Series 3 for improved battery life and performance. Now that also monitors my sleep rate plus the added bonus of health and daily activity monitoring.
I will buy Series 5 for the heart monitoring (Afib), improved watch face and any additional features Apple adds to this model.
My point is that the Apple Watch provides more features that just telling the time. That makes it useful enough to keep it on my wrist.
And if Apple released in addition a round Apple Watch, they could even sell a lot more. There are a lot of people out there that just refuse to wear a rectangular watch. – Sometimes ît’s really annoying how Apple is. “Nobody wants a bigger iPhone” (pre iPhone 6)…
Yes, and I’ve spent years asking Ford to bring back the horse for my daily commute. They simply refuse to do this one simple thing. Idiots!
/s
In all seriousness, a round display is very well-suited to much of the information we view. Think about why paper (office paper, for example) is rectangular and not circular. And the same for books.
I’ve got a square one. Would love to have a round one too. Options are a good thing…
And I agree, a round display is very well suited to much of the info I view on a watch
A round apple watch would match the circumference of my biggest pen. Is that a good enough reason to want one? Yes, very much so. It goes with my modesty.
My Pen is yuuge