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The Apple Watch was 2 years behind other smartwatches? How so?

by kj99 3y ago

bombcar 3y ago
Fitbit and various other "exercise-aimed" smartwatches were already out way before the Apple Watch, and there were other smartwatches (such as Pebble) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartwatch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartwatch has a whole listing. Apple came in quite late and slurped up much of the market. If their watch was Android-compatible, it'd be even more.
- kj99 3y ago
  They may not have been the first in the category, but those products were arguably a generation behind what apple introduced. Fitbit in particular was like comparing a flip phone to an iPhone.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    That's usually what they do (from a small number of examples, to be sure) - come in polished enough that it feels (or is) a generation ahead to those who haven't been watching. I don't know if they've been able to pull this off with AVP, as most people are just ignoring it.
    - kj99 3y ago
      I'm not sure why you'd draw that conclusion. I overheard a random group of people talking it at the dog park yesterday morning. Then I had breakfast with a friend today who isn't in tech at all, who does corporate conflict resolution, and he asked me if I'd tried a demo. Two other friends, also in no way connected to tech asked me about it and I did a demo to them over FaceTime. I think if you personally are ignoring it, you probably don't notice how much other people aren't. That said, I can't think of any of my friends who I would recommend to buy one at this stage, but I see Apple having no trouble selling as many as they can make.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        I’m sure they’ll sell, and people know about it, but by “ignoring it” I was referring to the whole virtual reality goggles market, which while it’s ahead of the VirtualBoy just hasn’t really made anything near even “Apple Watch” waves, let alone smartphone waves.
        kj99 3y ago
        Hasn't it? Are you head of a consumer sentiment research company with access to an unpublished report?
        filmgirlcw 3y ago
        I mean, if we're talking right now -- it absolutely has not. IDC predicts ~12 million AR/VR headset shipments in 2024, which is up 46% from 2023 (which was down 8.3% from 2022) but the Apple Watch, even though it had massive sales declines in 2023, was estimated to have sold 36-38 million units in 2023 [2]. Its wearables category did $39 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2023, which analysts estimate about half is attributable to Apple Watch. So right now, the entire AR/VR category is expected to ship 1/3 of the number of units of just the Apple Watch. Even if Apple sells 180,000 AVPs all with an MSRP of $4000 (so I'm being extra generous here), that's only $720m in revenue, or less than 3.7% of Apple Watch sales. And that doesn't even factor in all the Apple Watch units that are in use, which realistically, is probably 125 - 150 million units. Does that mean AVP or headsets like it won't ever achieve Apple Watch-like sales or adoption? Not at all. But it certainly isn't now and it's probably doing the category a disservice to expect it to reach those heights anytime soon, let alone pretend that just because awareness is super high that sales are guaranteed to follow. [1]: https://www.idc.com/promo/arvr https://www.idc.com/promo/arvr [2]: https://medium.com/@mingchikuo/apple-watch-estimates-and-predictions-apple-watch%E4%BC%B0%E7%AE%97%E8%88%87%E9%A0%90%E6%B8%AC-71aaeea2ffd4 https://medium.com/@mingchikuo/apple-watch-estimates-and-pre...
      - filmgirlcw 3y ago
        >but I see Apple having no trouble selling as many as they can make. But right now, supply-chain analysts suggest that they can only make 160,000 or something this year. Apple could sell literal boxes of dog shit to 160,000 people, so I don't think we really know what the size of the market is.(And incidentally, although shipping is now two or three weeks out (an improvement from two weeks ago), I can pick up an AVP from a number of stores in my area today and at another store on Saturday. I don't think we can make any assessments as to the market size/demand right now, but I will say that in-store availability one-week post release was not something we saw for the first iPad or Apple Watch. The iPad 2 was consistently out of stock its first few months, even -- and not because they were supply constrained but because Apple sold every device they got in-store.) Is interest/intrigue/vauge knowledge super high -- yes -- it's a new Apple product, that's a given. But prodct awareness != product success.
  - filmgirlcw 3y ago
    Fitbit was a fitness tracker that later adopted more smartwatch features -- but things like Pebble (early 2013), Android Wear (now Wear OS) (spring 2014), Samsung's Galaxy Gear (fall 2013) all already existed. Now were any of them as good as Apple Watch -- aside from Pebble (which could never have the same level of integration as Apple could offer for iOS, but still did a very good job), I would say no -- but I would also argue Apple Watch was fairly medicore outside of its core notification features at first too. WatchOS until like fall 2016 really wasn't that great. The third-party apps were all garbage and we didn't even get "native" apps until six months after the device launched and that original Apple Watch (the Series 0) was woefully underpowered for what it needed to be. I bought one and don't regret spending $800 on the stainless steel variant with the modern buckle combo, but it also got like two years of software support, and even the support was limited compared to even the low-cost Series 1 released a year later.

The Apple Watch was 2 years behind other smartwatches? How so?

by kj99 3y ago

The Apple Watch was 2 years behind other smartwatches? How so?

Fitbit and various other "exercise-aimed" smartwatches were already out way before the Apple Watch, and there were other smartwatches (such as Pebble) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartwatch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartwatch has a whole listing. Apple came in quite late and slurped up much of the market. If their watch was Android-compatible, it'd be even more.

kj99 3y ago
They may not have been the first in the category, but those products were arguably a generation behind what apple introduced. Fitbit in particular was like comparing a flip phone to an iPhone.
- bombcar 3y ago
  That's usually what they do (from a small number of examples, to be sure) - come in polished enough that it feels (or is) a generation ahead to those who haven't been watching. I don't know if they've been able to pull this off with AVP, as most people are just ignoring it.
  - kj99 3y ago
    I'm not sure why you'd draw that conclusion. I overheard a random group of people talking it at the dog park yesterday morning. Then I had breakfast with a friend today who isn't in tech at all, who does corporate conflict resolution, and he asked me if I'd tried a demo. Two other friends, also in no way connected to tech asked me about it and I did a demo to them over FaceTime. I think if you personally are ignoring it, you probably don't notice how much other people aren't. That said, I can't think of any of my friends who I would recommend to buy one at this stage, but I see Apple having no trouble selling as many as they can make.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      I’m sure they’ll sell, and people know about it, but by “ignoring it” I was referring to the whole virtual reality goggles market, which while it’s ahead of the VirtualBoy just hasn’t really made anything near even “Apple Watch” waves, let alone smartphone waves.
      - kj99 3y ago
        Hasn't it? Are you head of a consumer sentiment research company with access to an unpublished report?
        filmgirlcw 3y ago
        I mean, if we're talking right now -- it absolutely has not. IDC predicts ~12 million AR/VR headset shipments in 2024, which is up 46% from 2023 (which was down 8.3% from 2022) but the Apple Watch, even though it had massive sales declines in 2023, was estimated to have sold 36-38 million units in 2023 [2]. Its wearables category did $39 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2023, which analysts estimate about half is attributable to Apple Watch. So right now, the entire AR/VR category is expected to ship 1/3 of the number of units of just the Apple Watch. Even if Apple sells 180,000 AVPs all with an MSRP of $4000 (so I'm being extra generous here), that's only $720m in revenue, or less than 3.7% of Apple Watch sales. And that doesn't even factor in all the Apple Watch units that are in use, which realistically, is probably 125 - 150 million units. Does that mean AVP or headsets like it won't ever achieve Apple Watch-like sales or adoption? Not at all. But it certainly isn't now and it's probably doing the category a disservice to expect it to reach those heights anytime soon, let alone pretend that just because awareness is super high that sales are guaranteed to follow. [1]: https://www.idc.com/promo/arvr https://www.idc.com/promo/arvr [2]: https://medium.com/@mingchikuo/apple-watch-estimates-and-predictions-apple-watch%E4%BC%B0%E7%AE%97%E8%88%87%E9%A0%90%E6%B8%AC-71aaeea2ffd4 https://medium.com/@mingchikuo/apple-watch-estimates-and-pre...
    - filmgirlcw 3y ago
      >but I see Apple having no trouble selling as many as they can make. But right now, supply-chain analysts suggest that they can only make 160,000 or something this year. Apple could sell literal boxes of dog shit to 160,000 people, so I don't think we really know what the size of the market is.(And incidentally, although shipping is now two or three weeks out (an improvement from two weeks ago), I can pick up an AVP from a number of stores in my area today and at another store on Saturday. I don't think we can make any assessments as to the market size/demand right now, but I will say that in-store availability one-week post release was not something we saw for the first iPad or Apple Watch. The iPad 2 was consistently out of stock its first few months, even -- and not because they were supply constrained but because Apple sold every device they got in-store.) Is interest/intrigue/vauge knowledge super high -- yes -- it's a new Apple product, that's a given. But prodct awareness != product success.
- filmgirlcw 3y ago
  Fitbit was a fitness tracker that later adopted more smartwatch features -- but things like Pebble (early 2013), Android Wear (now Wear OS) (spring 2014), Samsung's Galaxy Gear (fall 2013) all already existed. Now were any of them as good as Apple Watch -- aside from Pebble (which could never have the same level of integration as Apple could offer for iOS, but still did a very good job), I would say no -- but I would also argue Apple Watch was fairly medicore outside of its core notification features at first too. WatchOS until like fall 2016 really wasn't that great. The third-party apps were all garbage and we didn't even get "native" apps until six months after the device launched and that original Apple Watch (the Series 0) was woefully underpowered for what it needed to be. I bought one and don't regret spending $800 on the stainless steel variant with the modern buckle combo, but it also got like two years of software support, and even the support was limited compared to even the low-cost Series 1 released a year later.