Apple Watch
The jokes were funny when the iPad was first released in 2010: Is it a giant cellphone without the phone part? Who was the genius that decided to name this thing the iPad?
But the teasing started to fade after 1 million iPads were sold after just 28 days on sale. Five years later, it’s considered a revolutionary product that has spawned hundreds of advances in the tablet market.
Is the Apple Watch destined for the same fate?
It’s set for release April 24, but some experts estimate Apple has already fulfilled between 1 million and 2 million preorders. There are three versions of the Apple Watch: the regular Apple Watch, the Apple Watch Sport and the Apple Watch Edition line (if you have more than $10,000 lying around).
Although Apple is strategically releasing its newest product and doesn’t seem to have the world “failure” in its vocabulary, I don’t think the Apple Watch will see much success.
The biggest reason: To have a functioning Apple Watch, consumers also need to have an iPhone. While the watch is essentially a mini-iPhone you can strap on your wrist, you need an iPhone for the watch to work.
The iPhone is the most popular smartphone in the U.S. — more than 41 percent of the smartphones in the country are iPhones. But for about 58 percent of Americans, an Apple Watch isn’t a rational item to splurge on if it means you also have to buy an iPhone. Apple CEO Tim Cook even admitted that the watch was designed to work with the company’s phones.
The Apple Watch also isn’t doing anything new. The Apple Watch Sport provides users with a way to keep track of their health and fitness, but FitBit and Jawbone have been doing the same thing for a while, and those prices are cheaper than the $350 Apple Watch Sport. Every other component of the watch is essentially a miniature feature of iPhone offerings, rendering it more of a toy than a functional and revolutionary product.
And — perhaps the most important point — the Apple Watch is kind of ugly. When the product was officially released, experts and Apple fanboys and -girls everywhere were more than disappointed with the aesthetics of the product. It looks more clunky than smooth and more juvenile than professional. If you want to purchase an Apple Watch with a more polished band instead of a silicone one, you should be prepared to pay upward of $1,000.
The invention itself isn’t a terrible idea — Apple is describing it not as a watch, but as “the most advanced timepiece ever created.” But it’s ultimately a whole lot of hype for something that’s already been made.
However, it is Apple we’re talking about here. If there’s one company known to be able to market just about anything, the front-runner in the phone market is the one.
