Live data from Hacker News

Apple Watch sales up over 50% since last year

techcrunch.com

81–90 of 275 posts

Re: Apple Watch sales up over 50% since last year

#83

I’ve been saying it all along: to understand the Apple Watch, look to the iPod. The first three years of iPod sales were minuscule compared to the following ten: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_qua... The two products occupy a very similar space of affordable luxury; they are not world-changing like the Mac or iPhone, but category-defining. Through gradual iteration and segmentation, Apple sl…

The jobs the watch will do aren't as clear cut as it was for the iPod.

The iPod let you listen to music and carried lots of (or all of) your music and had software that made it easy to convert and manage your digital music and buy more over the internet. Those were things basically everyone wanted and it did that better than competitors.

The watch? Well yeah it tells time, but it's worse at that then most watches and everyone already carries a device that tells time which the watch can't replace. Yeah, it gives you slightly faster access to notifications but not everyone needs that. Yeah, it has some good health/tracking benefits but that's not a huge deal to most people. Imho the best use of the watch is for (mobile OS)-Pay/mobile ID but adoption is still weak (unless you're in Tokyo) and it can be delivered with a much smaller wearable.

Re: Apple Watch sales up over 50% since last year

#84
post #23

My big question is: what do people do with theirs? Other than notifications and fitness tracking, I'm struggling to think of a use case for owning one.

I use the Modular watchface, and put things like other timezones on it, and a quick one-tap to timer. (great for cooking, or medicines, or Pomodoro, etc)

If you're a MacOS user, you can auto-unlock your computer with it (sounds scary even typing it, but it's damned handy)

A quick swipe up and you can use it to "ping" your iPhone (phone makes loud sonar sound) in case you can't remember where you put it.

If I'm on other side of house, and phone rings, I can actually answer call with watch and talk Dick Tracy style :-) (people tell me it sounds pretty clear)

Re: Apple Watch sales up over 50% since last year

#85
post #23

My big question is: what do people do with theirs? Other than notifications and fitness tracking, I'm struggling to think of a use case for owning one.

I don't have a smart watch myself but several of my coworkers do, the killer app for them seems to be two factor authentication codes; we've got like 10 different accounts at work that need 2fa and instead of pulling out their phones they just use the watch.

I use Authy instead of Google Auth; for some reason it never loads on my watch :-\

Re: Apple Watch sales up over 50% since last year

#86
post #83

I’ve been saying it all along: to understand the Apple Watch, look to the iPod. The first three years of iPod sales were minuscule compared to the following ten: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_qua... The two products occupy a very similar space of affordable luxury; they are not world-changing like the Mac or iPhone, but category-defining. Through gradual iteration and segmentation, Apple sl…

The jobs the watch will do aren't as clear cut as it was for the iPod. The iPod let you listen to music and carried lots of (or all of) your music and had software that made it easy to convert and manage your digital music and buy more over the internet. Those were things basically everyone wanted and it did that better than competitors. The watch? Well yeah it tells time, but it's worse at that then most watches and…

Watch + AirPods = killer app. It just needs more storage, but that will come in time. 3-4 generations from now and you won't even need a phone anymore.

Re: Apple Watch sales up over 50% since last year

#87
post #10

I hope this motivates Android Wear manufacturers to make a decent watch. Right now they are all pretty mediocre. You either get a fat sport watch with LTE or a less fat watch with very few compelling features. I just want NFC (for Android Pay), heart rate monitor, no-LTE (in exchange for being thinner) in a classic, non-sport style.

Huawei has some nice offerings...

Huawei was expected to have some (the first edition watches were well loved but growing old). Then the Huawei Watch 2 ended up being a thick sportwatch with LTE. The Huawei Watch 2 Classic, which looks marginally less sporty, is inexplicably is just as thick as the Watch 2 despite ditching all the LTE circuitry. It's also roughly $100 more expensive (figure that one out).

Re: Apple Watch sales up over 50% since last year

#89
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jobs the watch will do aren't as clear cut as it was for the iPod. The iPod let you listen to music and carried lots of (or all of) your music and had software that made it easy to convert and manage your digital music and buy more over the internet. Those were things basically everyone wanted and it did that better than competitors. The watch? Well yeah it tells time, but it's worse at that then most watches and…

Watch + AirPods = killer app. It just needs more storage, but that will come in time. 3-4 generations from now and you won't even need a phone anymore.

Mostly agree but I think smart ring + headset + big phone/small tablet is a better setup.

Re: Apple Watch sales up over 50% since last year

#90
post #57
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a good example. The reason the iPod sold so poorly the first few years was because you can only sync them with Macs. Very few people owned Macs, so iPod sales were poor. It took iTunes for Windows to come out before things changed.

You can only use the Apple Watch if you have an iPhone.

In the original days of iPhone, you could really only use it if you had a computer (to sync through iTunes, and to activate it if you didn't buy it in the store). iCloud got rid of all of that. I don't see why Apple wouldn't do similar with the Watch, especially since more of their services (Messages, Health) are being moved into iCloud services in iOS 11/watchOS 4.
Post reply on HN