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Apple Watch sales up over 50% since last year

techcrunch.com

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

#91

Post by sundvor »

wvenable wrote: post #44
donw wrote: 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.

Notifications and fitness tracking is more than enough. My phone hasn't had the ringer on in over 3 years now. At first I had a Pebble which is pretty much just notifications. Now I have a Gear S3 and now I'm using the fitness tracking all the time.

I also just got the S3 Frontier, leaving the abandoned Pebble platform. I'm loving it! It inherits the ability to use an always on display from the Pebble, however the whole build is much nicer and the display is simply gorgeous.

The cost is needing to charge the device daily, although at a 50% daily burn with AOD on this could be stretched to two days.

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

#92

Post by Fezzik »

Steko wrote: post #83
mortenjorck wrote: post #28

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…

I think the health tracking features are the major differentiating feature for wearables. Fit people want to track their exercise and stay fit and the unfit (for the most part) want to get fit. These two groups are 99% of the population. And, as we're finding in the 21st century/age of plenty, fitness takes some work. This thread alone indicates wearable can be a big motivator for fitness.

In addition, the health tracking will only get better and lead to preemptive sensing for cardiac events, insulin detection, and who knows what else.

I think the market for wearables (watches) is bigger than the iPod market, as wearables solve a real problem (fitness tracking and health monitoring) and are more than an awesome convenience.

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

#93

Post by bigiain »

CydeWeys wrote: post #14
bluedino wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not out of the ordinary to spend $400 on something like a Seiko or Citizen watch - and those are just "dumb" watches

Them being dumb watches is the appeal though. A good "dumb" watch will last decades. An Apple Watch is obsolete after, what, two years? I wear a battery-powered analog quartz dumb watch on my wrist and I love it. I change the battery every couple years and that's it. It tells perfectly accurate time (way more accurate than a mechanical watch costing orders of magnitude more) and will never be obsolete.

I backed the first and every subsequent Pebble KickStarter.

When they sold out to Garmin* and refunded my last order/pledge, I spent _some_ of that refund on a 1957 Russian Kirovskie Sputnik Commemorative mechanical watch.

I know none of my Pebbles or any Apple Watch is going to still be keeping good time 70 years from now... (it gains just under a minute a day - resetting it off my phone's clock when I wind it in the morning has become part of my waking up ritual...)

Edit: * It was FitBit not Garmin, as pointed out in replies by dugfin and spike021 elsewhere in this thread. Thanks.

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

#94

Post by wongarsu »

mikeash wrote: post #55
abc_lisper wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A parallel would be to have apple watches sync with 'droids..

Except not really, because the installed base of Macs at the time was a few million, while the iPhone installed base is around a billion. Being Mac-only in the early 2000s was orders of magnitude more limiting to potential sales than being iPhone-only today.

The iPhone install base is certainly not a billion, there have only been 1.2 billion ever sold. Estimates for the install base vary wildly, with the upper estimates at about 3/4 of a billion and more reasonable estimates at half a billion.

In any case, iPhones have about 15%-25% of the global smartphone install base (with the US being the big outlier). I certainly count that as very limiting. Maybe not on quite the same magnitude as Macs were for early iPods, but Apple Watches so far also did a lot better than early iPods.

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

#95

Post by bigiain »

wepple wrote: post #74
capkutay wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an obsolete apple watch will still be able to at least mirror the functionality of any 'dumb' watch.

Be properly waterproof, never need a charge, and take abuse for 30 years like a $150 automatic?

I've got a 70 year old mechanical watch on my wrist right now. I bought it second hand from eBay, but paid significantly under $150 for it...

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

#96

Post by criddell »

Mahn wrote: post #69
sideproject wrote: post #50

I'm not a watch wearer, so I don't plan to buy one. However, I thought if I DID (or if I got one as a gift), I would probably want an Apple Watch. So Apple has convinced me there. Do others feel similar?

I wear a fitness tracker. If I'm gonna wear something on my wrist, it ought to do something that my phone doesn't, otherwise it's hard to justify the cost.

I like to wear a watch, so I kind of wish I could get a fitness tracker (with heart rate monitor) that doesn't have a clock on it. I sometimes wear a watch and a fitbit and that just looks stupid.

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

#97

Post by brlewis »

criddell wrote: post #96
Mahn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wear a fitness tracker. If I'm gonna wear something on my wrist, it ought to do something that my phone doesn't, otherwise it's hard to justify the cost.

I like to wear a watch, so I kind of wish I could get a fitness tracker (with heart rate monitor) that doesn't have a clock on it. I sometimes wear a watch and a fitbit and that just looks stupid.

Which Fitbit? Seems like the Flex 2 wouldn't look bad next to a watch.

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

#98

Post by archvile »

vlozko wrote: post #81

From my own experience and reading that of others, it's the device that no one can justify until they get one. Then it becomes the device that the vast majority love and some can't live without.

Can confirm, feel like I lost my left arm if I don't have my watch on.

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

#99

Post by Steko »

Fezzik wrote: post #92
Steko wrote: 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…

I think the health tracking features are the major differentiating feature for wearables. Fit people want to track their exercise and stay fit and the unfit (for the most part) want to get fit. These two groups are 99% of the population. And, as we're finding in the 21st century/age of plenty, fitness takes some work. This thread alone indicates wearable can be a big motivator for fitness. In addition, the health tra…

I agree with all points except when you assume 'wearables' implies 'watches'. Similarly to payments, the health benefits can be delivered with a much smaller device. If health is the main benefit than that big gorgeous battery-sucking screen is a waste.

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

#100

Post by bigiain »

vlozko wrote: post #81

From my own experience and reading that of others, it's the device that no one can justify until they get one. Then it becomes the device that the vast majority love and some can't live without.

So I've been a serial Pebble smartwatch rather than Apple Watch owner - my original motivation was I thought it's be neat to be able to glance at my wrist while riding the bike and see who was calling/texting so I would know if I wanted to pull over and answer right then, or wait till I'd got to my destination. Turns out the answer was _always_ "No." whoever it was, it could always wait. I was either going to be at home/work in 5-10 minutes and I could call back then, or I was on a trip and wasn't going to stop till the bike needed more fuel in an hour or two and it could wait till then. (Or I could ignore it completely...)

When Pebble sold out to Garmin* and refunded my pledge/order for the last version, I spent some of that money on a second hand mechanical watch - I really don't miss much from the "smart" features I'd gotten used to... (Probably the only thing I miss is the "silent vibration on my wrist when I've left my phone on my desk but am still nearby"...)

Edit: * It was FitBit not Garmin, as pointed out in replies by dugfin and spike021. Thanks.

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