This market will eventually be huge and Apple is well positioned to dominate it.
However, to realize its potential Apple will need to simultaneously move several wearable product lines forward at once. It can't be just Watch. It needs to be Watch plus AirPods plus maybe a half dozen other things. Apple has to figure out how to do that.
I can't even imagine half a dozen other things, much less think Apple needs them to dominate the wearable space. I think, aside from the Airpods, they need only one more crucial wearable: an AR device - i.e. either cool glasses or contacts.
I think more devices are needed because "wearables" are more personal/intimate devices that need to account for greater variation in preferences and abilities.
For example, AirPods can't be the only earphone product with Siri support. Of course, Apple has Beats and so can indeed offer more options. And they already are (or, in the case of Beats X, soon will be).
You offer another example. AR glasses and contacts are not the same thing -- those are two very different products.
Bracelets (which are distinct from watches), rings, necklaces, headbands, hats.... there are a lot of ways to create wearable computers.
I certainly don't mean to suggest that Apple doesn't "get" this. They clearly do get it, which is why they have all those watch bands and why (as noted above) AirPods aren't the only earphones they sell.
But I do think that Apple has shown some difficulty in moving multiple product lines forward simultaneously. The poster child for this difficulty is the Mac Pro, but the Mac Pro isn't the only example. My point is that Apple needs to get much better at this.
By the way, some people will read this and make an analogy to the proliferation of Performa models back in the mid 90s. But that was an entirely different thing. What happened in the mid 90s was a proliferation of SKUs and marketing labels, not a proliferation of substantively different products. I'm talking about a range of substantively different products in which the whole of the product ecosystem is greater than the sum of the parts. I firmly believe that has to be Apple's future. They can't be a one trick at a time pony anymore.
I actually love the fitbit ecosystem and waited all year for Black Friday deals, only to find that fitbit didn't have any. Unless you call $20 off a $150 watch a "deal". It's their own fault they blew black Friday. And their response is to fire a hundred people, whom I assume weren't the ones who decided against Black Friday discounts?
really, you think this is all about black Friday sales, and the fact you did not want to pay $130 for a fitness band, if that because Fitbit conditioned you to wait for sales and that their product should not cost more then $99. When consumers like you can not offer up and extra $30 for a product you blame it on the company. How about you take a little responsibility for not spending more money and causing the company to lay people off.
Now may be you understand why Apple does not make cheap products and they do not discount the price. Because people expect it and then do not buy when the company can not afford to do it any more otherwise they have to let people go.
This market will eventually be huge and Apple is well positioned to dominate it.
However, to realize its potential Apple will need to simultaneously move several wearable product lines forward at once. It can't be just Watch. It needs to be Watch plus AirPods plus maybe a half dozen other things. Apple has to figure out how to do that.
I can't even imagine half a dozen other things, much less think Apple needs them to dominate the wearable space. I think, aside from the Airpods, they need only one more crucial wearable: an AR device - i.e. either cool glasses or contacts.
you do understand why google glass wearers quickly got the nick name of glassholes and it is a dead product today. Walking around with an AR device will result in the same negative results from the balance of the world. Having tech attached to your body which makes you look obnoxious to others will not have a good results. I am starting to see people acting negatively to people who are always looking at the cell phones public and social settings. Phones are starting to make people look rude to the people around them.
Sorry to hear about the job losses. My son had a Fitbit for Christmas a year a go. I have to say it seems poor quality. The synchro is very sluggish, the clock looses a few minutes after 3 or 4 days and sometimes the software freezes. We would not recommend it to friends and are unlikely that we will buy another one. If this is a typical experience Fitbit will loose a significant number of customers long term unless they can really improve.
They have had a huge problem with returns. We haven't yet moved to the Apple Watch, but in my family we've had several Fitbits, two of which had to be returned
i'd rather have a nice-looking, versatile, more expensive apple watch than an ugly, disposable fitbit. very happy with the stainless steel series 0 with leather strap for going out and rubber for the gym.
Couldn't agree more. I don't want to sound too critical, but the fitbit is rather ugly.
I actually love the fitbit ecosystem and waited all year for Black Friday deals, only to find that fitbit didn't have any. Unless you call $20 off a $150 watch a "deal". It's their own fault they blew black Friday. And their response is to fire a hundred people, whom I assume weren't the ones who decided against Black Friday discounts?
I don't believe Watch had Black Friday deals and it sold well apparently.
This market will eventually be huge and Apple is well positioned to dominate it.
However, to realize its potential Apple will need to simultaneously move several wearable product lines forward at once. It can't be just Watch. It needs to be Watch plus AirPods plus maybe a half dozen other things. Apple has to figure out how to do that.
I can't even imagine half a dozen other things, much less think Apple needs them to dominate the wearable space. I think, aside from the Airpods, they need only one more crucial wearable: an AR device - i.e. either cool glasses or contacts.
Agree. Some other wearables category may come up, but I can't think of one right now. Apple Watch provides the screen for UI & likely most health/fitness functions. AirPods provide the audio input/output, which leaves a requirement (of some kind) for vision.
I am continuing to see more & more Apple Watches in the wild. Sometimes it is someone who said they wanted one and finally got it for Christmas or birthday, or some cases it is a spouse who received one and thought they would hate it, but now they never take it off. This is going to be a much slower growth than iPhone, but wearables will be the next largest consumer electronics market by value (ahead of home automation including digital assistants for home, dedicated VR,...).
I'm not convinced on that. It seems to be selling just as well and I see more in the wild than iPhones during its lifecycle.
I do believe Apple could be doing more as I didn't see much hype on Series 2 launch day.
One can still assert truthfully that miniaturization costs money. Lots of money. Money for R&D, money for the most advanced, most precise tooling, and money for the most advanced materials.
That any pundit and wannabe pundit would think that an undercapitalized start-up dependent on generic componentry will have the wherewithal to go head to head against Apple, who has the resources to design their own silicon, develop advance production techniques, procure the advanced tooling for it, and buy up the world's total capacity in all sorts of tech components, just tells me that all these Fitbit cheerleaders can't distinguish the hole in their analyses from the hole in their posteriors. Especially after heavy hitters like Samsung and Motorola/Lenovo failed in their wearables efforts, they should have tempered their unalloyed faith in Fitbit.
I actually love the fitbit ecosystem and waited all year for Black Friday deals, only to find that fitbit didn't have any. Unless you call $20 off a $150 watch a "deal". It's their own fault they blew black Friday. And their response is to fire a hundred people, whom I assume weren't the ones who decided against Black Friday discounts?
really, you think this is all about black Friday sales, and the fact you did not want to pay $130 for a fitness band, if that because Fitbit conditioned you to wait for sales and that their product should not cost more then $99. When consumers like you can not offer up and extra $30 for a product you blame it on the company. How about you take a little responsibility for not spending more money and causing the company to lay people off.
Now may be you understand why Apple does not make cheap products and they do not discount the price. Because people expect it and then do not buy when the company can not afford to do it any more otherwise they have to let people go.
A little harsh on the OP, but you hit the nail on the head - both with the fact that companies like Fitbit have lowered expectations and Apple never get into a game to the race to the bottom.
The only feature I really miss on the Apple Watch is sleep tracking. I wish Apple would come up with something akin to the AirPods dock for the Apple Watch that also includes a thin band-only "sleep data collector" that links and syncs to the watch dock and/or watch. I don't want to sleep with the watch on because it's too big and needs to be recharged but I really miss having sleep data, which I sorely need. A bedside watch dock would satisfy a few use cases; recharging the watch, alarm clock mode for the watch, sleep data collection, etc. The band-only sleep data collector could also include a haptic feedback module to wake you up silently in the morning or periodically throughout the night if you need to take medications, attend to a child, attend a virtual meeting in a different time zone, etc. Upon waking, the band-only data collector would replace the watch in the dock so it charges during non-sleep hours.
I actually love the fitbit ecosystem and waited all year for Black Friday deals, only to find that fitbit didn't have any. Unless you call $20 off a $150 watch a "deal". It's their own fault they blew black Friday. And their response is to fire a hundred people, whom I assume weren't the ones who decided against Black Friday discounts?
really, you think this is all about black Friday sales, and the fact you did not want to pay $130 for a fitness band, if that because Fitbit conditioned you to wait for sales and that their product should not cost more then $99. When consumers like you can not offer up and extra $30 for a product you blame it on the company. How about you take a little responsibility for not spending more money and causing the company to lay people off.
Now may be you understand why Apple does not make cheap products and they do not discount the price. Because people expect it and then do not buy when the company can not afford to do it any more otherwise they have to let people go.
A little harsh on the OP, but you hit the nail on the head - both with the fact that companies like Fitbit have lowered expectations and Apple never get into a game to the race to the bottom.
harsh would have been to call him names... I was just presenting my observations.
I do think the story about the AppleWatch and AppleMusic are very similar. Both widely panned by technocritics on their release...with slow adoption but both products have gotten better and now are gaining dominance. But of course these critics have moved on to other topics in their attention deficit mindset...AI, microsofts new found computing mojo, etc.
i ordered two SS S2 AppleWatch for Christmas gifts. Both took two weeks to arrive! I think the AppleWatch demend was crazy high this holiday season.
Comments
For example, AirPods can't be the only earphone product with Siri support. Of course, Apple has Beats and so can indeed offer more options. And they already are (or, in the case of Beats X, soon will be).
You offer another example. AR glasses and contacts are not the same thing -- those are two very different products.
Bracelets (which are distinct from watches), rings, necklaces, headbands, hats.... there are a lot of ways to create wearable computers.
I certainly don't mean to suggest that Apple doesn't "get" this. They clearly do get it, which is why they have all those watch bands and why (as noted above) AirPods aren't the only earphones they sell.
But I do think that Apple has shown some difficulty in moving multiple product lines forward simultaneously. The poster child for this difficulty is the Mac Pro, but the Mac Pro isn't the only example. My point is that Apple needs to get much better at this.
By the way, some people will read this and make an analogy to the proliferation of Performa models back in the mid 90s. But that was an entirely different thing. What happened in the mid 90s was a proliferation of SKUs and marketing labels, not a proliferation of substantively different products. I'm talking about a range of substantively different products in which the whole of the product ecosystem is greater than the sum of the parts. I firmly believe that has to be Apple's future. They can't be a one trick at a time pony anymore.
really, you think this is all about black Friday sales, and the fact you did not want to pay $130 for a fitness band, if that because Fitbit conditioned you to wait for sales and that their product should not cost more then $99. When consumers like you can not offer up and extra $30 for a product you blame it on the company. How about you take a little responsibility for not spending more money and causing the company to lay people off.
Now may be you understand why Apple does not make cheap products and they do not discount the price. Because people expect it and then do not buy when the company can not afford to do it any more otherwise they have to let people go.
you do understand why google glass wearers quickly got the nick name of glassholes and it is a dead product today. Walking around with an AR device will result in the same negative results from the balance of the world. Having tech attached to your body which makes you look obnoxious to others will not have a good results. I am starting to see people acting negatively to people who are always looking at the cell phones public and social settings. Phones are starting to make people look rude to the people around them.
Couldn't agree more. I don't want to sound too critical, but the fitbit is rather ugly.
I'm not convinced on that. It seems to be selling just as well and I see more in the wild than iPhones during its lifecycle.
I do believe Apple could be doing more as I didn't see much hype on Series 2 launch day.
That any pundit and wannabe pundit would think that an undercapitalized start-up dependent on generic componentry will have the wherewithal to go head to head against Apple, who has the resources to design their own silicon, develop advance production techniques, procure the advanced tooling for it, and buy up the world's total capacity in all sorts of tech components, just tells me that all these Fitbit cheerleaders can't distinguish the hole in their analyses from the hole in their posteriors. Especially after heavy hitters like Samsung and Motorola/Lenovo failed in their wearables efforts, they should have tempered their unalloyed faith in Fitbit.
A little harsh on the OP, but you hit the nail on the head - both with the fact that companies like Fitbit have lowered expectations and Apple never get into a game to the race to the bottom.
harsh would have been to call him names... I was just presenting my observations.
i ordered two SS S2 AppleWatch for Christmas gifts. Both took two weeks to arrive! I think the AppleWatch demend was crazy high this holiday season.