Apple Watch – Empty tables.

Reply to this post

Apple Watch is an experiment that isn’t really working.

• For the first time in many years, a new Apple device is available on the second market and many sellers are not aiming to make money.
• Typically huge demand and limited supply means that Apple devices are sold on the second market at a significant premium.
• With the Apple Watch, things seem to be very different.
• Firstly, the devices are not selling at a premium.
• Secondly, many of the devices offered have been used for a week or two and the user and have ended up not appealing to the user.
• This fits with my observations at a number of Apple Stores in the UK and US, where the Watch tables are pretty quiet while the iPhone and Mac tables are as busy as ever.
• Furthermore, the most commonly asked question seems to be “why should I buy it?” rather than “how much is it?”
• This is not necessarily bad news as my expectations for the Apple Watch have been way below consensus for some time.
• This is because the Apple Watch fails to fulfil the single most important criteria for it to really take off.
• This criteria is the same for Apple as it is for everyone else in that a wearable needs to solve a problem and make the user’s life better.
• Apple has an excellent track record in this department but I think it has fallen far short with the Apple Watch.
• Furthermore, it’s positioning as a watch replacement means that the user has to replace his wrist watch with this device or risk feeling very foolish (see here).
• This creates a much higher barrier to adoption compared to products like FitBit, Misfit Shine and Microsoft Band which can be worn on the other wrist without embarrassment.
• The Apple Watch is a first generation product but until Apple comes up with a use case that changes the product from an oddity into a must have, volumes of every generation are very likely to disappoint.
• This is proving to be a sticky problem and even the old fall back of health monitoring does not really work because none of the sensors are sufficiently accurate or reliable to provide reliable data.
• I continue to believe that inaccurate health data is bad at best and dangerous at worst.
• Consequently, the medical equipment industry will not be losing any sleep yet.
• I continue to think that the Apple Watch will not provide the scale required to drive Apple on another leg of revenue growth.
• Hence, Apple will need to explore another product category to take over once the current iPhone 6 replacement cycle begins to ebb.
• I continue to prefer Microsoft and Google for the ecosystem as I think that market is already pricing in all of the benefits being derived from the iPhone 6.