In April 2015, the Apple Watch finally became
available for sale. It became, simultaneously, one of the finest smartwatches in the land and, at least
according to the perception in some
quarters, a relative disappointment for the company.
Why the ambivalence? Apple hasn't released sales figures, but it
hardly seems like a flop -- IDC ranks it second in the wearables market, behind only Fitbit, which has sold more than 20
million of its namesake devices. Any other company would be celebrating that as
a breakout freshman product. But this is Apple, after all. You know, the
company that sold roughly 75 million
iPhones in
the first quarter of 2015.
Still, wearables appear to be a market poised for big time growth and, as such, sustained attention from
Cupertino. In October, Apple updated its Apple Watch software to let apps run on the watch itself instead of
working as iPhone extensions, mitigating the absolute interdependence of the
initial scenario. The second version of the Watch OS also features new watch
faces, improved third-party apps and better overall performance.
But those improvements were ultimately incremental. And in the
meantime, the Watch has seen some fairly meaty price cuts at mainstream retailers like Best Buy.
We expect the introduction of the second-generation Apple Watch to
come sometime in 2016. In the interim, we will count
the minutes, obsessively glancing at our wrists for news, all the while
curating the most interesting predictions, best guesses and rumors about what
the future holds.
