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Once the initial sales froth has gone I still don't believe the Apple Watch will be a runaway success. It's too expensive and there's no real killer app or reason to buy it other than to show off to your mates. It will probably sell well to keep fit fanatics and business types who need a lot of reminders through a busy day.
 
Maybe interest dropped after launch because they were told by their parents that they wouldn't buy them one. :rolleyes:

More like:

September.- Oh look at the new Apple Watch!!! I want one right now!

7 months later.- Apple Watch? That thing hasn't come out yet? lolz.
 
Most teens don't have $350 (minimum) sitting around doing nothing, that they can spend on something with no clear benefit to them.

A timepiece? They don't wear them, and never have.

A fitness tracker? They're either overweight and don't want to track it, or they're not and don't think they need to.

An alternative to taking their iPhone out of their pocket? They never leave a phone in their pocket for more than 15 minutes at a stretch, and why would they want to? Pulling out their phone is as normal a reflex to them as glancing at their wrist is to a 50-year-old.

An expensive status symbol? OK, there's your niche teen market.

Actually some of them do. My 17 year old daughter has several watches. But they are purely a fashion accessory for her....the fact it keeps time is purely secondary. No doubt in my mind, she'll pull out her phone before looking at her wrist.

But it's also a 'cheap' accessory. She doesn't have any interest in spending a lot of her money on true real quality timepiece. We talked about the Apple Watch when we were at the Genius Bar a couple of weeks ago and she said she couldn't see the appeal to her or any her friends. She thought it was ugly and didn't didn't see the point it. And she definitely didn't think it was worth the price. (She immediately converted it to hours worked and the other things she could buy.)

She is physically attached to her phone almost every waking moment of the day, but has zero interest in an Apple watch.
 
Current teens barely exercise and eat like crap, not surprising that fitness would not be interesting.

This isn't true. My local gym is full of high school brosephs who clearly take care of themselves.....but as others have said teens aren't really that into watches from what I've seen. Heck I didn't think anything of a watch when I was that age, now I love them. The watch was never targeted at teens and this survey is unsurprising and pointless.
 
stopped by apple store today for an iphone issue. I noticed that there were no ones around the table where the smartwatches are located.

look like Apple watch got very little interest, especially new released product.
 
One thing I will say is that having tried them on as an adult.... They are quite impressive and downright gorgeous once you see them in person. However, I couldn't help but think they would be on the big side for under developed teen wrists.... not to mention the #$%^& storm it will create with their teachers.

I know, one more thing the teachers need to worry about.
 
I think it's hilarious to see people push the idea of -a "killer app". There's no such thing. What's the killer app on an iPhone? iPad? Gany of the Galaxy phones?

Killer apps are different things for different people. When the iPad launched, I didn't see anything that it did that I couldn't live without. When the iPad2 was launched, I had seen the Kindle reader for iOS, which was my killer app. I have bought hundreds of books that I would have never gotten access. Books once again became an impulse purchase.

For the iPhone, it is the iTunes remote. I don't actually use the phone part of the iPhone, In our family, we just text.
 
I think it's hilarious to see people push the idea of -a "killer app". There's no such thing. What's the killer app on an iPhone? iPad? Gany of the Galaxy phones?
A "killer app" is a piece of software that sells the hardware it runs on, like Lotus 123 sold early IBM PCs, Pagemaker sold early Macs, iTunes sold early iMacs, Halo sold Xboxes, etc. Smartphones don't sell to just one market though: there are different killer apps for each market. For young people, it'd be Facebook. For businesspeople, it's Mail. For stay-at-home parents, maybe Angry Birds (I don't know ... not my demo). There aren't many apps to differentiate this smartphone or tablet from that one, if that's the point you're trying to argue, but these apps are creating a demand for the product category as a whole.

There are apps for the Apple Watch that will appeal to certain niches (e.g. the fitness stuff), but so far nothing that's going to excite a mass market to want to buy a new device just to run it on.
 
Whilst I don't think the Apple Watch is going anywhere anytime soon, I don't think it'll be as popular as Apple would like. But only time will tell.

10 million in one year will put the Apple Watch in the same range as the iPhone.
 
Apple Watch is just too expensive for the teenager crowd. I sense that Apple Watch is really created for those employed, 20 and up age group who have been addicted to the Apple ecosystem. iPhones are for teenagers. Even the watch design tells me that.
 
The watch will probably sell well the firsts couple weeks as the Apple fanatics buy it up, but after that it'll die out like all the other smart watches. Many people just don't wear watches like they used to since the smartphones make them redundant.

I can't help but think you're absolutely correct.

Conversely I'm quite sure with millions and millions to spend on spin control, clever writers on the marketing team are bound to creatively construct a fairly compelling story to hook more Apple devotees into buying.

Perhaps during the honeymoon period Apple will have enough sold to make the Watch an accepted product in their lineup. With so much cash Apple could even subsidize the Watch so as to save face. It doesn't have to be a top seller.
 
Actually some of them do. My 17 year old daughter has several watches. But they are purely a fashion accessory for her....the fact it keeps time is purely secondary. No doubt in my mind, she'll pull out her phone before looking at her wrist.
So in fact, she doesn't wear a timepiece: she wears a bracelet that happens to have a clock on it.
 
I'm 26 years old, make a reasonable amount of income and could easily afford one.

Ever since it has been announced, I've been following the Apple Watch more or less closely.

The question that pops in my mind every time is "What is it even for?". I just don't see any appeal for such a product. Just like every other smart watch out there, it tells the time and mirrors a few of the phone's features.

All the other "features" not pulled directly from what the phone can do are nothing more than gimmicks. I don't need to monitor my heart rate. I don't need to draw things on a tiny screen to send to another tiny screen.

No matter how I look at it, I simply see a useless lump of metal and plastic that'll need charging everyday and adds absolutely nothing to my daily life.

Nobody so far has been able to convince me otherwise.
 
I am pretty sure that smartwatches would not be allowed in school. Having evernote at your wrist for a quick cheat sheet whenever you glance at it seems like the first thing students would try. I expect it to be out of the picture for university exams as well.
 
I can't help but think you're absolutely correct.

Conversely I'm quite sure with millions and millions to spend on spin control, clever writers on the marketing team are bound to creatively construct a fairly compelling story to hook more Apple devotees into buying.

Perhaps during the honeymoon period Apple will have enough sold to make the Watch an accepted product in their lineup. With so much cash Apple could even subsidize the Watch so as to save face. It doesn't have to be a top seller.

Crazy that Apple would try and subsidize a product that isn't selling..

If those who doubt the success of the Apple Watch are correct, they would be correct for the very reasons so many predicted before the watch was ever released. Seems to me that subsidizing a mediocre product that was easily predictable by so many could be viewed as managerial incompetence.
 
In fact Rolex have been ramping up both production and price of their watches for over a decade now. If watches were on their way out, how do you explain that?
Raising unit prices seems to me like a defensive maneuver to shore up profits, by going after the high end and selling it as fashion accessory, reflecting the erosion of the market at the low end, and as a utility device.
I don't know that you can say that. You can go off your tiny corner of the planet and the few people you see around you. It's a tiny fraction of the world population.

I travel extensively and watches are everywhere. Maybe a little shunned by college kids, but honestly even plenty of young people wear them.

And as I mentioned earlier, if we're just talking about watches as a concept, I gave you some staggering numbers as to how many watches are available on Amazon.com.

I'm fully aware that these are not smart watches, but the original poster was talking about watches in general as a concept at that point.

If there were such a steep decline in watch wearing since the smart phone came out, how do you explain those incredible numbers?
As fundamentally meaningless, and biased by a lot of wishful thinking and selective blindness on your part?

For example, a whole bunch of different watch models on Amazon doesn't mean people are buying them. In fact, it could represent manufacturers trying desperately to find something that will recapture the interest of buyers, emphasizing style over function. And you're no better than you accuse him of: extrapolating from your tiny corner of the planet (hint: traveling doesn't put you into contact with a substantially larger percentage of the population) to imagine a world that the rest of us (i.e. more observers than you) are not seeing. The decline in watch-wearing, especially among the young, is well-documented. Your flimsy anecdotal evidence does nothing to refute that, and the strength with which you assert it suggests some kind of emotional investment in the enduring popularity of the buggy whip... I mean wrist watch.
 
stopped by apple store today for an iphone issue. I noticed that there were no ones around the table where the smartwatches are located.

look like Apple watch got very little interest, especially new released product.

Yep, It was like that on Sunday and Monday here. The stores were crazy busy as usual, but the full-functionality demo watches were getting little attention.
 
I would be a lot more interested if I could use it without the iPhone, even if only to make/receive calls, so I didn't have to carry an iPhone everywhere. Would be handy if you're at the beach or out for the evening. I know Samsung has a smartwatch that takes a sim card so you can use it as a standalone phone but it's too heavy and bulky for my liking. If Apple could do it right that would worth the money for me.
 
I am pretty sure that smartwatches would not be allowed in school. Having evernote at your wrist for a quick cheat sheet whenever you glance at it seems like the first thing students would try. I expect it to be out of the picture for university exams as well.
For test-taking it's a simple matter of changing the instructions from "turn in your calculators, music players, and phones" to "turn in your calculators, music players, phones, and watches (there's a clock at the front of the room)".

More difficult will be setting and applying rules for day-to-day lectures and other classroom activities. The problem there isn't cheating, but distraction.
 
To be fair, the iPhone wasn't a runaway hit at first. They had to get the price down. Once that happened, followed by the App Store, it became the ridiculous success it is today. I think price will be one of the Apple Watch's primary limitations. But that's not necessarily a bad thing for a version 1 product.

They brought the price down by getting the mobile networks to subsidise the sales price in return for exclusive contracts. Nobody is going to subsidise the Apple Watch. You're paying £650 for a watch that will be obsolete in a year. Spend that or more on a traditional watch and you would probably expect to keep it for at least a few years.
 
Crazy that Apple would try and subsidize a product that isn't selling..

If those who doubt the success of the Apple Watch are correct, they would be correct for the very reasons so many predicted before the watch was ever released. Seems to me that subsidizing a mediocre product that was easily predictable by so many could be viewed as managerial incompetence.

I only brought up a subsidy business model to save Apple the embarrassing stigma surrounding a failed product.

Other companies are pleasantly devoid of Apples extreme elitist attitude and the culture of supremacy and narcissism nurtured by the previous CEO. Now sustained by the decades old cult like following its hard to imagine Apple ever giving up on the Watch.
 
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