Why would Apple want to make an iWatch?
Signs point to wearables becoming the Next Big Thing
One year ago almost to the day the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Apple was testing an 8-inch iPad. In July, just days after Googles announcement of the Nexus 7, it reiterated that a "smaller" iPad was coming. Those rumors, of course, foretold the launch of the iPad mini late last year.
Yesterday, it was The New York Times turn: Apple is now said to be "experimenting" with a "watch-like device," WSJ quickly corroborated the story. These reports, and the timing of them, are almost surely no coincidence; the public relations departments of many companies engage in a dark art, feeding carefully-selected bits of information on unreleased products and initiatives to publications under deep cover in an effort to set the tone, to correct misinformation, and to drive the conversation. Its a game that Apple is widely understood to play.
As its schizophrenic stock swings in the breeze, Apple wants us and more importantly, weary investors who are frantically searching for Cupertinos next iPhone- or iPad-like hit to know that its trying to untap the value in new markets where it doesnt currently operate. Theres no better place than Wall Streets newspaper of record to start spreading the news.
But what does Apple really stand to gain from making a wristwatch?
Put simply, evidence is growing that this is the Next Big Thing in consumer tech. "This is going to be a very large market and is developing much faster than most people comprehend," says MetaWatchs Bill Geiser, a watch industry veteran with a long stint at Fossil on his resume. "I've long believed Apple would launch a smartwatch, so this comes as no surprise."
The blockbuster demand for Pebbles Bluetooth-connected e-paper smartwatch on Kickstarter is only the latest indication that the watch isnt dead, that people havent given up on strapping something to their wrists in a modern world where every cellphone tells the time its just that the watch is now expected to do more. Nikes wildly popular FuelBand is another example: it marries the smartwatch with an emerging trend toward personal health analytics and the "quantified self." At Best Buys around the country, youll find Jawbones Up; it doesnt have a display, but its another example of technology going back onto the wrist after the advent of the time-telling cellphone couldve killed the watchs chance for a comeback.
Poor battery life and a lack of comprehensive support in iOS have limited the capabilities of the few smartwatches that have launched so far, including Pebble and Geisers MetaWatch. But if anyone has the resources to fix those problems, its Apple: the companys unprecedented $137 billion war chest could go a long way toward new display technologies, chips, and fabrication techniques that make the category more practical for real-world consumers, just as the original iPhones capacitive touchscreen made full-touch smartphones livable for the first time. WSJ also reports that Apples massive manufacturing partner Foxconn is investigating a number of techniques for making wearable devices more power-efficient, attracting the attention of multiple Foxconn partners.
Arguably, an Apple entry could have the same effect on the industry that the iPod did at its introduction: it could take the smartwatch from a cottage industry, a niche, to an explosive market led by a must-have product.
Theres already evidence in the companys products that this is happening. The iPod nano, for instance which attracted so much attention as a makeshift watch that Apple added watch faces to later models recently morphed into a larger rectangle thats no longer appropriate for the wrist, possibly making room for a true smartwatch in the lineup. Recent Apple devices have started incorporating support for Bluetooth Low Energy, which sips a fraction of the power of a traditional Bluetooth connection. And iOS 6 added support for Bluetooths Message Access Profile (MAP), allowing connected devices to dig into the iPhones text messages for the first time. Smartwatch makers have also discovered other rudimentary "hooks" in iOS 6 for notifications that could hint at even better support for smartwatches in future versions. (Whether Apple will keep those hooks to itself or offer it to everyone who wants to make a smartwatch, though, is anyones guess.)
While an "iWatch" could be a massively successful product for Apple, Geiser notes that theres still an opportunity for outsiders to get a piece of the pie. Wristwatches are often considered deeply personal fashion statements jewelry, even and that may not play to Apples stength: though an iWatch would almost certainly be a beautiful, high-end product, offering dozens of styles isnt really part of the companys playbook. "Smart wearables will quickly become functional fashion accessories. Fashion accessories are, by definition, forms of personal expression," he says.
