I find this interesting in a few ways.
First is my own experience. I’ve been wearing my Watch from day one and I love it. It’s become part of my daily routine. But before I got it, I had stopped wearing a watch for several years and hadn’t bought one in almost a decade. My belief had been that Watch would expand the watch wearing population, not cannibalize it. To my mind, the thing to consider is didn’t the iPhone already replace a watch for many people? (much the way we’ve seen steep declines in point-and-shoot cameras or mp3 players). I would have expected the watch hit to have already happened and that the “smartwatch” would re-grow the category as opposed to creating converts.
Second, this to me speaks volumes about what pundits aren’t getting right about smartwatches. There continues to be this call for a “killer app” that will make the device compelling to so many. But as has been said so many times, the iPhone didn’t have a “killer app” that it used to sell it’s self. The “killer app” was “phone” because it replaced a key piece of tech and then allowed it to do so much more. In the same way, perhaps we are now seeing that, in fact, the “killer app” of the watch is simply timekeeping. If this watch is good enough to replace your existing watch AND give you a whole new slew of features, then perhaps it’s got what it needs to be a success.
The difference, of course, is that more people own a phone than wear a watch by far. But perhaps the measure of success shouldn’t be how many people now strap something on their wrist that previously didn’t; but how many devoted watch fans find smartwatches compelling enough to switch.
Either way, a new billion-dollar product can’t be a bad thing.
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