“Back in January, I did a post titled ‘Why Apple may not launch an iWatch anytime soon.’ The gist of the piece was this: that Apple doesn’t enter markets particularly early, but rather enters at the point where the technology is ready for it to provide the kind of transformative product it’s used to disrupt the music player, smartphone and tablet markets in the past,” Jan Dawson writes for Beyond Devices. “At the time, my conclusion was that Apple would likely stay out of the wearables business entirely, until such time as the underlying technology was ready. However, given the other things we’ve seen from Apple in the last few months, I now believe it’s very likely we’ll see something in this category from Apple in the near future, but it won’t be a watch, and it’s likely that it will actually be several products rather than just one.”
“There are two big problems with the smartwatch market as it stands: firstly, the underlying technology doesn’t seem to be ready, which means it doesn’t deliver on the promise of the category. But secondly, the promise itself simply isn’t all that compelling for the vast majority of the general population,” Dawson writes. “There’s a sense that if someone can just crack the smartwatch category it’ll suddenly explode, but I’m just not sure I agree with that. It still fundamentally seems like a solution in search of a problem at this point.”
“For all these reasons, I’m still skeptical that Apple will release a product that’s identifiable as a watch. If I think about the thorniest technological challenge with smartwatches, it’s the fact that you’re having to squeeze both a fairly smart CPU and a decent display, and the battery to power them, into what has to be a very small form factor,” Dawson writes. “That problem essentially goes away if you see wearables less as notification screens and more as off-device sensors, as Apple seems to, in contrast to Google.”
Tons more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Without Apple to lead the way, current crop of clumsy wearable gadgets not ready for prime time – January 10, 2014
The Galaxy Gear stupidwatch: Without Apple to copy, Samsung is clueless – September 4, 2013
Clueless companies race to debut stupidwatches before Apple defines the smartwatch – January 3, 2014