“Though the odds are likely stacked against my skepticism, I’m not convinced Apple plans to sell a smartwatch,” Rocco Pendola writes for TheStreet. “There’s something unsettling about the world’s greatest company jumping into a market manufactured by a consensus of less-than tech companies.”
“Consumers haven’t necessarily said we demand more wearable devices. And I don’t think they qualify as products people don’t know they want until Apple tells them so. Rather they’re an attempt by tech companies to create a frenzy that might never take,” Pendola writes. “But here’s the cool thing about the questionable prospects of the wearable market from what should be the perspective of Apple fanboys and investors: It doesn’t matter. The fate of an Apple smartwatch will have very little impact on Apple’s near- or even long-term prospects.”
“If I’m wrong and an iWatch (or smartband) happens to sell well — like five million units out of the gate — that’s icing on Apple’s cake. Just icing because there’s no way this thing sniffs iPad, let alone iPhone sales numbers. Some would classify mere cake icing as a failure. But I wouldn’t. I would just call it a product I wasn’t all that jazzed about acting as a periphery to Apple’s core and — hopefully — boosting or helping Tim Cook maintain healthy margins. If I’m right … an Apple iWatch either fails or never materializes,” Pendola writes. “The material outcome of an iWatch failure isn’t different at all from what will happen if an iWatch — or some sort of wearable from Apple — never even happens in the first place. $1,000 for AAPL remains in the cards. It doesn’t depend on iWatch being the next big thing or even being a thing.”
Pendola writes, “It’s nothing more than noise — a mere distraction — to what will be the central Apple story for the rest of 2014 heading into 2015… iPhone 6.”
Read more in the full article here.