Smartwatch Renaissance

- November 06, 2017

Smartwatch Renaissance

Third Time’s A Charm

Anything is great at the 3rd version, e.g. MS Windows really became a hit at 3.0 Here comes another example, Apple Watch Series 3. The chance of Smartwatch becoming A thing is high this iteration. Don’t get me wrong, anyone may claim nothing “new” here indeed. However, novelty is often overrated. The highlights here are “utility” and “just works”. Apple Watch 3 happens to have 3 killer utility features:

Telephony and mobile data connection
Music streaming
Mobile payment

Finally, one can leave the mobile behind for a few hours, such as go to jog, gym, dinner and movies. Note, I’m not saying this is for everyone imminently. They are for premium users for now. Those utility features may be also a good fit to a few user groups, such as elders and little kids.

www.apple.com/watch

One More Thing

Being Apple, they all come with secret sauce.

AirPots makes Telephony on watch much nature. Not everyone wants to be as COOL as Michael Knight all the time. Some people maybe ok with bluetooth headphones, but the problem is most of them seldom working flawlessly all the time.

www.apple.com/airpods, Knight Rider classic

Apple Music for music streaming and Apple Pay for payment. There is only a company to guarantee HW, SW and Service just work fine together and only a company to be blamed if they are not. Naturally, this kind of structure has a higher chance to deliver something excellent especially when something new involved.
Wireless charging is here for all your devices, as long as it’s an Apple. BTW, Apple recently bought PowerbyProxi, to keep its edge on the wireless charging technology. Acquisition is a common theme in the tech industry, and it’s difficult to say how valuable this one is. But, some money definitely looks smarter than others.

www.apple.com/iphone-x/#wireless-charging

So What?

As “Crossing the Chasm” puts it, there is a gap between the early adopters to the early majority in term of diffusion of innovations. In order to make the system tips, someone needs to fill the gap. A good utility feature is typically a good bridge. Apple is typically very good at this, igniting “innovation” via its strength of vertical integration. Apple likely does it again.

Nevertheless, it will take a different beast to democratize the industry. Which will make the pie even bigger, serve more users and facilitate various differentiations. That job is typically done better via an open platform strategy. There are a lot to say about these two models. That's a topic for another day. For now, it is always better to have two kinds of players instead of one.