On the other hand this is always the case and Apple's been the best at creating a general consumer wearable that appeals to the masses. Its integration into the apple ecosystem is a big selling point and that's probably the biggest factor that is basically impossible for competitors to replicate.
On a tangential note, I'd like to take a moment to recognize the amount of work that Apple has put into its accessibility features. Assistive Touch on the apple watch will probably serve a remarkably small portion of the user base and perhaps costs more to develop than the return they'll ever see on it. Still, year after year Apple keeps advancing accessibility features in all of its products. This is definitely an area where big tech companies like Apple and Microsoft excel at.
Apple has leads in silicon and cross-platform integration which is inarguably led to a better user experience, extended battery life, and smaller form factor. Try piecing together an Airpods Pro grade product with 'off-the-shelf' parts and half the firmware engineers.
Apple has orders of magnitude greater scale through their supply chain, and a real clincher: technological mastery of material science; from CNC milled aluminum to tooling for high grade plastic resin, and can shoulder out competitors from even touching the raw material once they've even realized they need it.
Apple has solid brand cachet, which drives loyalty which drives revenue.
Apple has (last I checked) the highest revenue/sq. foot retail space in the world. Yes, the rest of retail is dying, but Apple controls the image, experience, support, and purchasing of all it's own products. Check out an Apple store on a Friday night in the Bay Area, it's incredible how packed they are.
Arguably the most difficult thing for competitors to copy is the culture of industrial design and UX prioritization backed by engineering. Every other major competitor in their spaces shamelessly copies the externals without the same cohesion and mastery of internals -- it's embarrassing frankly (checkout the Oppo 'Enco X' earbud site, it's a poorly made rip off of the Airpods site).
I don't own any Apple products, and I don't endorse their labor practices, but I respect their brand, products, and patience in releasing GOOD things at the right time. Consumers do too, judging by revenue.
Apple's weakness is now their precarious position in bed with China, which will take decades to undo.
But this holds for the entire world economy.
Does this also correctly count the area of all Apple partner stores? In some countries they sell Apple devices but don't operate a single store themselves.
So which labor practices does Apple engage in that every other phone manufacturer doesn’t - using the same factories and supply chain?
I stopped reading after this part.
What? This doesn't even make sense. This is by far the most important lead Apple has.
Their ability to put performant and efficient chips into tiny devices is why they have such a software edge. Other Android wearables suck because the underlying hardware is not able to power the experience without significant compromises.
It's not an accident that WatchOS is vastly better than competing Android offerings. It's hardware driving software possibilities.
Anyways, it's not like this is up for debate anyhow. Ask any analyst who's watched the industry for the last decade, they'll still tell you that Apple's advantage is in the software world. If iMessage and MacOS were available on other hardware, Apple would be selling two crazy handfuls of nothing to customers. The average consumer doesn't care if their laptop has faulty graphics, a keyboard failing en-masse or soldered storage. They just want the little blue bubble to pop up when they send a message from their computer. Recognizing that, Apple arguably makes more compromises than anyone else in the industry. Their concept of "iteration" really only involves bringing their product to the next most common denominator.
On a similar note I’d like to point out that accessibility affects everyone. You don’t need to be disabled to enjoy accessibility. My eyes are fine, (I think), but I find the iPhone X’s lowest screen brightness too bright iOS’s blue filter to be barely effective, so I use a custom color filter (almost full red) and “Reduce white point” and am super happy it’s an option. People used and probably use assistive touch for things that don’t compensate a disability, but just add useful features. The back tap shortcuts are just a nice feature. The zoom is nice if you want to show something to someone a bit further away. I could go on.
As someone with perfectly fine hands I love this feature because one thing I hate about modern smart watches (RIP Pebble) is that you have to touch and inevitably smudge up the screen. Bam, problem single-handedly (what pun are you talking about?) solved. Massive kudos. The other, more obvious advantage is that your other hand stays free, of course.
> and perhaps costs more to develop than the return they'll ever see on it.
As you see, the user base for such features is bigger than you may think. Besides collecting some easy sympathy points for helping disadvantaged people, Apple also seems to be huge in the business of servicing small, but under-served and vocal minorities (where can someone who wants a modern, small phone go?), which will turn into strong advocates for their brand.
Combined with their market position, huge margins, decent but good looking software and UX, it's incredibly hard to catch up to them.
Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables because there is no competition at their luxury price point in a luxury device ecosystem like the iPhone. To catch up, first you'd have to defeat the iPhone, meanwhile develop and then unleash a wearable all of your customers also want, and somehow make money doing so. It's a tall task.
When I was younger, I wanted my vitals. I bought numerous BP machines. I even bought glucose meters. I wanted to know what my body was doing.
I wanted to know because I was young, and those numbers were always fine.
Now--I just don't want to know. You can call it denial, or life is too short to measure health stats all the time, especially on my wrist.
I'm also a Certified Hypochondriac. I've been one for ever. I don't anything on my wrist reminding me of my eventual death of cancer, or a heart attack.
Now--I get a physical every three to four years.
I don't want to know what my aging body is doing daily.
If I had diabetes though, the upcoming glucose monitor would be a no brainer. This will be huge.
I'm a Watchmaker, so my tastes might not be Apple's demographics? My perfect watch is something I can repair, and just tells time, and looks good on my wrist.
I will admit Apple square watches have grown on me. I didn't like them when introduced, but now they look fine.
Would I trade my '62 IWC with the 362 movement for any Apple watch; hell no.
I wonder if blood pressure readout is one of those things like Theranos' assays from one drop of blood - not possible due to physics. It certainly is less obviously so.
All a competitor has to do is submit their paperwork and they won't get any competition from Apple. Easy!
people with apple pay carry a backup card, a samsung watch allows paying with magstripe emulation in case of legacy terminals. pre 2020 pandemic this was indespensible and there are still often inoperable nfc terminals and MST is a great backup.
I hate the elitism around the apple watch and its minor changes to standard health tracking wearable tech that has had normal LTE and other full phone functions from the get go... not to mention the ridiculous requirment that an iPad isnt enough to set up a watch, you need to buy into their phones.
Their software isn’t perfect, but it’s so thorough that it allows them to do levels of polish that competitors have a hard time catching up to.
1. Apple was early - Nope, Apple came late to the party, years after first movers were there.
2. Voice computing distraction - Again, nope. Amazon Echo devices and Google Home devices are HUGE. Headphones and earbugs come with Alexa and google Assistant integration. Apple tries with Siri but it's consistently far behind Amazon and Google there.
3. Wearables require design expertise. It’s not enough to just throw together some leftover smartphone components and ship wearables. -- Yet, that's what Apple did with the first gen of Apple watch. Gen 1 was also dead in three years. Gen 1 was a pilot project.
4. Ecosystem and technology advantage. - These are Apple advantages, but not ten year leads.
5. No price and feature umbrellas under Apple. - Well, there are a lot of people still wondering what utility they have aside from a few "health" measures. I personally don't care about my heartrate all day, nor my steps, or a bad idea of calories burned. I don't need to monitor my O2 levels, nor get instant EKGs. I personally stuggle to see the point of smart watches. Notifications? I can see them on the phone screen, it's just as easy for me to look at it. Music controls? If I'm in the car the controls are on my steering wheel. At home I just say "Alexa, stop" or whatever. When I have headphones/earbugs in? I can tap the button on my headphones just as easily as I can tap my watch. What else would I use it for?
There certain is a price umbrella, too, because you have to have an iPhone and be bought into that ecosystem.
The Apple Watch is very useful. That’s why people keep buying it.
It’s nice to get notifications on your wrist if you don’t have your phone out 100% of the time. The alarms are silent and dead simple to set, and it can function as your wake up alarm in the morning, and sync with your phone as a backup alarm. It lets you unlock your phone while wearing a mask. It lets you pay for things instantly without taking your phone or wallet out.
If you are someone who exercises, the utility goes up even more. It’s great to control your podcast or music while out walking or running without digging around in your phone. It’s perfect for tracking your workouts, because it’s always on your arm and it tracks your heart rate.
I agree that the EKG & O2 level features are pretty much a gimmick. But the watch generally is an exceptional piece of technology.
Just as most people who are willing to spend money on high end phones buy iPhones, the same is true for other wearables. Apple knows that it can recoup the up front costs of any research and development.
I don’t really think apple has a decade lead, what they do have is minimal innovation they’re competing with. AND more importantly, a brand and ecosystem. That being said if Samsung came out with a decent watch similar to pebble and bundled it with their phones I think they’d be outselling Apple.
Despite Apple Watch's merits over the Pebble, I still miss my Pebble watches. The thing I actually miss the most is the physical buttons, so I can switch the currently-playing song with my watch without having to look at it. Having nearly all interaction with the Apple Watch being a touch screen is one big downside IMO -- still something it hasn't really "beaten" vs. Pebble Watch :)
One of the things that always confused me about the Apple Watch (and other smartwatches) is that they market them as sleep tracking devices, but if you do use it for that purpose then I'm not sure when you're supposed to charge it. I guess you could charge it during a morning (or evening) shower but is ~30 minutes a day of charging enough?
Without a large screen and turning off all notifications, I get about 3-4 weeks of battery with my current watch. Personally I rarely take it off.
I’d like at least a week of battery if I were to adopt any other smart watch. For me personally, I enjoy thinking less about the battery of a device that I mostly use for passive personal data collection and telling the time.
To me, a power hungry OLED touch screen seems like doing the important things wrong. It's harder to see in the sun, doesn't work with gloves or when it's cold, you need to actually LOOK at it to do something like pause music or change the album.
5-8 days on 1 or 2 powerbanks is normal. Most people hiking more than that are going to find somewhere to stop and charge (and restock food) at least that often anyway. Truly hitting wilderness for 2+ weeks is the actual edge case where I'd want to leave my watch at home.
There may be a niche market for low power, hackable, e-ink watches with minimal functionality, but the size of that market is orders of magnitudes small than what companies like Apple are addressing.
Pebble ultimately fizzled out because the demand just wasn't there. It might be possible for an indie company to make something similar if they focus on staying lean and small, but it's difficult to cater to niche audiences with small TAMs where the barrier to entry gets lower every year.
Frankly I don't think I'll wear another smart watch that isn't a Pebble, which means I don't think I'll get another smart watch.
(I considered putting the Pebble into airplane mode, but it seems to be less reliable reconnecting to the phone if I do this.)
What do Pebble-lovers get if they don't want an Apple Watch? I was hopeful about the Fossil hybrid smartwatches, but the UI just wasn't there (two clicks to see more of a message?). Garmin is on my list, but they have so many models I can't tell which ones are best, or where they are in their upgrade cycles.
I think we're confusing 1) tech 2) product 3) marketing/positioning and 4) brand.
All of that together, Apple has a very powerful entrenched lead.
They can launch almost anything and own the category, the are firing on all pieces.
Google doesn't have either the supply chain, distribution or hardware-product discipline.
And who else is going take on Apple's machine?
So from a tech perspective, it's doubtful they are '10 years ahead' but from an operational perspective, it sure feels that way.
The timeline UI makes such much sense.
So it won’t matter to me if the watch lasts a day or a week, it’s off my wrist when I sleep and goes on it’s charger.
Having gone from a Wear OS watch with ~1d battery life to a hybrid e-ink watch with ~2w battery life I don't think I'll ever go back, even though I'm giving up features. You already mentioned travel, but an even bigger issue for me was that if my watch didn't get charged overnight for whatever reason (watch wasn't sitting correctly on the charger, fell asleep with my watch on, etc.), I'd basically have a paperweight on my wrist the next day. And having to disable features (always-on display) to get my watch to last through the day always felt silly.
Overall, it's just one less thing to worry about on a daily basis. If I ever see a low battery warning on my watch, I know that it'll still last for more than a day.
> Custom silicon / technology / sensors (a four to five-year lead over the competition, and that is being generous to the competition)
> Design-led product development processes that emphasizes the user experience (adds three years to Apple’s lead)
> A broader ecosystem build-out in terms of a suite of wearables and services (adds two years to Apple’s lead)
Why would competitors wait to start on emphasizing user experience and broader suite of wearables until after they create "custom silicon" (whatever that means)? And the claim that user experience is superior for an Apple itself is unsubstantiated. As an Android/Windows person, I would most likely have a better experience with an Android-based wearable than an Apple-based wearable because of the integration. If the claim is that Apple has a lead against competitors for owners of Apple products, why is that interesting enough to write a blog post? I bet Apple has a lead in Lightning to 3.5mm headphone dongles too.
Among my friends and colleagues, those who don’t buy Apple Watch often buy Garmin watches instead. In the area of fitness tracking watches, Garmin seems to be serious competition. It’s missing the full app ecosystem of Apple Watch but I think you can send messages and email to some Garmin watches over 4G, for example.
Personally I love my Garmin Fenix watch. It lasts a week with light usage or up to 18 hours when using GPS. It also offers NFC payment. Notifications might be supported but I honestly don't need yet another device to bother me with messages and such... Meaning I disabled all of them ;).
On another note: Apple might simply be successful because of consistency. They've been iterating and improving on there smartwatch platform for years whiles others change their whole product every few years (samsung) or simply neglect it (google).
I finally caved and bought an automatic. I just want a watch to show me the time accurately, last long and offer good water resistance as I wear the watch all the time.
What was Microsoft (PocketPC) and Palm's lead in hand held computing back in the days, right before Apple shit over everything they did in one announcement?
Wearable as currently imagined kind of suck. Making them better while keeping the same concept is just gonna make something that sucks faster/lighter. Someone needs to come in and take the world by storm with something we didn't think of yet. Maybe that will STILL be Apple, but it could be someone else.
They are going to absolutely dominate the market so completely.
They have all of that, powered by a tiny system-in-package and a little battery.
There are definite flaws in the device. I find buttons unnecessarily hard to tap for instance (they should offer more vertical space), and the face is so sensitive that it routinely triggers unwanted actions. It is really annoying to start something I want (like a timer) and notice some time later that I somehow accidentally stopped the timer by hitting my watch on something.
As far as 3rd parties, I have seen a general trend of apps gradually withdrawing their support for watchOS. There just aren’t that many useful things to do on a small surface. For apps suited to this (timers, reminders, etc.) it is fine.
You don’t even need to say “hey Siri”. It starts listening on the gesture of raising it to your mouth. Genius.
Raise watch to mouth and try things…
“Text Danielle ____” “Open Pandora” “Open wallet”
There are also settings to disable active watch face unless it’s raised. I have that enabled and never have issues accidentally hitting it. Check your settings and let me know if that helps.
It also triggers all the time accidentally when my watch was nowhere near my mouth. I frequently look at the watch and see a message like “I don’t understand that” with a transcription of something it thinks I said.
“Hey Siri” is also unreliable, mostly because if you hesitate for a few too many milliseconds it thinks you’ve finished your query. I almost exclusively use Siri by holding the power button on my iPhone or Apple Watch.
I know, it's not a mobile browser, not really much as a mobile messaging device — but that's fine. One one hand, I'm not your stereotypical phone user that is always engrossed in the black mirror but furthermore, the Apple Watch means I am even less inclined.
I have phone, text, apple pay, music (spotify, pandora), maps, and so much more. Probably the only thing I miss is a browser to google something. But that's pretty rare that I need that.
The best part is that all of these apps work natively, without the phone nearby, entirely over LTE or WiFi.
Seriously if you hate carrying around a big phone, get an LTE connected Apple watch. It's a game changer.
I’d love to buy one again if it could hold a charge for several days. But the value proposition isn’t high enough for the pain of daily charging.
While I'm certain the technology has advanced, what surprises me most is how basic these finger reading devices seem. They're basically some electrodes on your skin near major nerve centers and a little bit of signal processing, like barely any signal processing.
It's about time this technology entered the mainstream. I was waiting for VR with occular/vagus nerve sensing for depth of field emulation but I guess hand sensors are the next best thing.
Apple is selling a ton of watches because the brand is currently so strong that it's a no brainer for most people.
Also, the product is actually not bad.
But, I don't find it attractive, I think the rectangular design was an early mistake that will hinder their design for a long time.
The software look good mostly because Google did a really poor job when porting Android to this form factor.
This is not the end of the story, and it won't need 10 years for competitors to catch up.
Though I also disagree with the article itself, but for one particular reason: I don't think it'll be nearly 10 years to catch up.
I was skittish on the idea of a watch I have to charge (nearly) every day, but it really has improved my life, in fact it's _nearly_ to the point where I don't need a phone.. since I can pay, take calls, respond to messages, play music (though, not browse the web or take photos) without having my phone anywhere near me.. I've trialled entire days with no phone and it's worked pretty well honestly.
There's nothing coming close to this anywhere else.
But, I think people catch up easier than they lead.
A decade lead is absolutely unthinkable- if google/samsung wants to do wearables seriously I think it'll be 2 years at most -- especially as they're almost certainly working on it already, and they can use the product that's already on the market as a meter to measure against for anything they're building.
I think the major lead Apple has in wearables has to do with ecosystem. I wear and Apple Watch because I want to listen to Apple Music while running. Doing so is clumsy with any other device.
> Google I/O 2021. At its 2021 developers conference, Google showed signs of finally taking wrist wearables seriously by ditching Wear OS and partnering with Samsung on a new OS. While it is fair to be skeptical that the effort will end up being successful, the announcement was a marked change from prior Google I/Os when wearables were all but ignored. Diving a bit deeper into Google’s announcement, it’s easy to see how far behind Google truly is in wearables.
Google completely dropped the ball on Wear OS. To add to this, Qualcomm’s wearable SoCs have also been lagging. Samsung is generally good at keeping pace with hardware, but has been hobbled by Tizen and a weak ecosystem. These things cannot change overnight, and Google’s stewardship track record is something that doesn’t improve drastically, regardless of any announcements it makes.
For wearables as a whole, I don’t believe Apple has a decade-long lead though. We’ll have to wait and practically see what it does for AR wearables before concluding on a number.
In case of the watch specifically I actually think there isn't enough motivation to innovate considering the space hasn't blown up like everyone expected. If you take headphones out of the picture wearables as a whole is still a relatively niche device category.
Anyone who has worn a decent, say, polar or garmin, sports watch for more than a day will be amazed and terrified to discover how bad apple wearables are. A good touchscreen is all they have to offer.
I feel when it finally is we’ll roll our eyes at the current day smartphone concept.
How is that an Apple lead?
6 years ago I wrote this blog saying everyone would be wearing a smart watch within a decade. My reasons were “health and safety“
https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/in-the-future-everyo...
“ There has been much discussion on the need for smart watches like the Apple Watch. People have a hard time believing that a large market exists. I can’t say with certainty that you’ll be wearing an Apple Watch a decade from now but you’ll definitely be wearing a smart watch from Apple, Google, or some new kid on the block.”
Apple needs competition. They wouldn’t make large screen iPhones until Android started winning, for example.
Hopefully we get there. There’s a lot of promise in wearables:
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/12/smartwatch-ca...
