“Apple may have shown rivals its hand by unveiling its first smartwatch months before it hits the market,” Shara Tibken reports for CNET. “But it also made sure consumers had a reason to wait for its launch.”
“By announcing its first-ever smartwatch more than a quarter before it’s available for purchase, Apple… got every would-be smartwatch buyer to hold off purchasing a rival device from Samsung, Motorola, LG, and other competitors trying to nab a share of the emerging market for smart devices,” Tibken reports. “Because really, who’s going to buy a smartwatch now without waiting to see exactly how the Apple Watch, as the device is called, stacks up?”
MacDailyNews Take: The usual fools. You know, the same type of person who rewards convicted patent and trade dress infringers by buying cheap, plastic knockoffs of Apple iPhones and iPads.
“‘Current wearable makers must raise their game to respond to Apple,’ said analysts from research firm IHS Technology,” Tibken reports. “Introducing the wearable at least four months before it hits the market gives developers time to build apps using Apple’s WatchKit platform. The Apple Watch could have thousands of apps when it launches in early 2015… Mike McCue, CEO of the popular news-sharing app FlipBoard, will make an app for the Apple Watch, though it will take some time for Flipboard to figure out what it will be like. ‘I was truly inspired [by the Apple Watch],’ McCue told CNET. ‘As an industry, everybody’s been working to get to this point for years and years… where technology crosses into the world of fashion and is far more personal… It’s a whole new level.'”
Read more in the full article here.
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Galaxy gear watches are now officially less than worthless.
Maybe they could export it to another galaxy .
Samsung will simply cut the prices on their current inventory and offer new smartwatches with even more features. Samsung can build smartwatches at a torrid pace and future ones may even have a digital crown (but called something different). Samsung can tweak Tizen to look very similar to the AppleWatch OS. I’m sure Samsung won’t give up easily.
Since there are a few people who say the Moto 360 looks way better than the AppleWatch and costs a lot less, I don’t think the smartwatch industry is exactly frozen at this point. However we’ll never really know because no one will ever admit to it.
The AppleWatch would be perfect for me if the battery life is acceptable but it probably won’t even be available until February 2015. Apple can’t freeze up the smartwatch market that long.
The Moto 360 did look good…until yesterday.
Yes round watches do generally look better than rectangular devices though look at the moto 360 side on and its thick bulky appearance is far from pretty but the practical limitations of that layout cripples and design for digital use. It restricts internal layout and gives you a hopeless screen that in the case of the moto isn’t even capable of being properly round. It’s a dead end relying on style over substance with little capacity for expansion or improvement. Indeed if it could do more its screen weakness would only be substantiated even more clearly. Apples solution is a great compromise with the best practical shape being beautifully engineered to reduce bulk to what is possible with present technology. Indeed if battery life is sufficient it will be stunning how much they have achieved in such a small practical form factor with so much s ope for development. It’s more conservative looking than I had expected but I realise it was the right decision, they needed it to appeal to a wide section of buyers that included traditional watch wearers as well as tech and sport junkies.
…more like floccinaucinihilipilification.
Past Tense: “What there currently was of it.”
It is gone. You either match or beat Apple or you are beaten.
“…everybody’s been working to get to this point for years and years…”
I want to know who this “everybody” is. They sure aren’t the people who have released products so far!
Everybody without a clue about what a smart watch should be except Apple of course. 🙂
How come he is allowed to publish anything after being so wrong for all these years?I want a job where I
can be horribly wrong for so long and still be allowed to practice. Sheeeesh! Apparently he has no shame.
Who wants to buy into my Apple Watch Sex App patent? Just as the Apple Watch GPS app vibrates to tell you to turn right or left, this app could vibrate telling you to move lower, or to the right or left, etc…
Don’t you know that already? …oh… you mean with someone else.
If I worked for any of the other (so-called) “smart watch” manufacturers, I would quit now (and sell any options I had). The smart watch market is officially dead (unless you want to pay only $100- in which case, as always, there will always be bottom of the barrel options). Why spend $250 on the currently available brain-dead options when, for only another $100, you can have the gold standard?
I know I’ll be in line to buy an Apple Watch the minute they’re available (even thought the 2nd or 3rd generation will be better- I miss waterproof to 5-10 meters- I’m sure it will come one day- but then I’ll just trade up)…
Everyone forgets that Apple has watched (no pun intended) the tiny iPod nono evolution and transorformation into a watch for years and the plethora of watch band vendors that sold millions of transforming watch bands to huge demand…
Apple’s market research in that respect is a solidly indicator of the huge feasability and guaranteed success of Apple the watch.
Ignore this at your own risk all naysayers.
Apple may have indeed discontinued the popular iPod nano 6th gen after realizing how popular it had become as a watch, just to create a vacuum and reinvent it as the Apple Watch…
apple’s nono evolution and transorformation wins again.
The biggest difference I see in your comparison is that the iPod Nano stands on it’s own, where the capabilities of the Apple Watch line drop drastically w/o the accompanying iPhone5 or newer. This would make all other Apple devices entry points to purchase other Apple devices. The Apple Watch is not an entry product it is an extension product to the iPhone specifically. It may have been a different story if it could use ANY smartphone to connect to since then it would act as a ‘bridge’ device into the Apple ecosystem.
The Apple Watch will only work with specific Apple iPhones. So, Android users have no reason to wait, unless it’s to see if Samsung is going to rush out a lookalike clone (at least visually) to replace their current line.
No reason to wait?
Yes there is ! New watch with a new iPhone 6…LOL
Samsungs’ next:
Lets hope this time they patent the hell out of it, and the OS.
If any watch shows up with circles and honeycomb icon grids, they will legally drop into oblivion.
Geekbeat (shamelessly Samsung hired these days) was just over in Berlin checking out myriads of ‘smart’ watches, none of which came within one iota of impressing anyone. Apple totally blew this one out of the park.