“When it launched Apple Watch, many observers wondered why the company had spent significant efforts developing a single new product, one that didn’t appear to have the same unit sales potential as iPhone or even iPad,” Daniel Eran Dilger writes for AppleInsider. “Looking at the origin of Apple Watch, it becomes more clear that it is closer to being a revamped continuation of iPod than an entirely new concept. ”
“Further, rather than being a huge, high risk, speculative investment, Apple Watch borrows heavily from Apple’s existing core competencies and technologies, while also necessitating the creation of prerequisite technologies that benefit its other product lines, including Continuity and Apple Pay,” Dilger writes. “Apple Watch also taught the company how to sell a new class of products, one that is equal parts fashion and technology, and which requires a different type of retail experience. Those lessons will help the company venture into new markets. Automotive sales are far closer to the sales model of luxury watches than selling boxes of electronics.”
“Even if Apple Watch were only moderately profitable, it would already be an outstanding accomplishment and a strategic success. We actually know that Apple Watch has been far more than that however,” Dilger writes. “Last year alone, it generated around $7 billion in revenue with high margins. That’s comparable with the performance of Amazon Web Services cloud business, and by itself as a product is already far more valuable than the entire hardware business of Amazon Fire, Google Nexus, Alphabet Nest, or Microsoft Surface.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We can’t wait to see what’s next for Apple Watch! Hopefully, we’ll hear much more next month at WWDC.
Apple watch Rocks… And its only bound to get better and better.
Apple can do a lot to make it much better:
Make it a little slimmer (not hard).
Make it faster (not too hard).
Longer battery life (certainly possible).
Works independently from iPhone (easy).
Better Siri. (They’re working on it.)
Once Apple does these things, it will absolutely be unbeatable.
It will .. Give it a couple more iterations:)
P.S. I think Siri and dictation on apple watch is real good… They understands me better than they do on iphone.. For whatever weird reason ?
It’s already unbeatable, it’s in a class by itself! 🖖😀⌚️
The slimmer, faster and battery are tied together with battery tech being the bottleneck.
I would imagine Apple is on the cutting edge of lithium batteries. Until researchers make a HUGE discovery in new battery chemistry, it will continue to be small improvements.
Apple’s cpu and chip design will continue to use less power, so that will help some.
Everyone in the tech business is dealing with battery limitations.
as I’ve said before the problem with the Apple naysayers is that they like to compare everything with iPhone.
considering that iPhone is the most profitable product in the world, by itself makes more money than Google, or Microsoft or all the vehicles put out by Ford combined, saying that Apple’s new products are ‘failures’ as they don’t match iPhone is stupid.
If that is the logic then every product in the world, every car, plane, radio, teacup, etc is a failure as none of them make more money than iPhone.
the Apple Watch is a successful product.
(btw note the total number of watches sold by Switzerland is about 30 million a year so in short time Apple is making a third or more of the production of the Swiss watch industry).
Can we just put this on iCal so when all those boring trolls tell us what a failure it is (as usual based on no evidence whatsoever in the traditional troll fashion) we can simply flag this up.
Snore fizzle, brap.
Apple Watch is a solution looking for a problem. And it’s too big and too ugly.
More than that, it has a short lifespan and it’s expensive for a piece of disposable tech.
Not if you don’t want to wear a watch, which a lot of people don’t.