Category Archives: Smartwatches

The changing devices on the US mobile networks

For much of the last three decades, the terms “wireless carrier” and “cellphone provider” have largely been synonymous.  Your wireless carrier was the company that provided the service for your cellphone, and in the vast majority of cases also sold you that cellphone, often at a heavily subsidized rate. However, the reality is that the wireless carriers in the US are becoming much more than just cellphone providers, and in fact cellphones are becoming a smaller percentage of devices on the major US mobile networks over time.

Phones are growing, but not as fast as in the past

The total number of phones on the four major US mobile networks (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless) continues to grow, but the rate of growth has slowed. Whereas in the past phone subscribers grew by double digits every year, now they grow by single digits at best, and the reason is obvious: the vast majority of people who will ever own a phone already have one.

Screenshot 2015-05-05 15.05.47The small amount of growth there is in phones comes in large part from the generational effect of new users emerging at the younger end of the population scale, combined with a few laggards and late adopters among the older generations. Continue reading

A week with the Apple Watch

I’ve now spent a week with a couple of Apple Watches. The first of my pre-orders to arrive was the one I ordered with my wife in mind, a 38mm Sport with a white sport band, which arrived on the 24th itself. The one I ordered for myself arrived this week, and that’s a 42mm Watch with stainless steel case and black sport band. I’ve worn that for the past two days, but wore the other for several days first. I don’t normally do reviews here, and goodness knows there are plenty out there from people who do, so this isn’t a review in the “should you buy it?” sense, but rather a set of observations from my use of the Watch.

This is going to be a significantly longer post than I’m used to writing here, so bear with me, and feel free to skim through using the headings as a guide to what’s in each section. Continue reading

What to look for in the Apple Watch reviews

With the Apple Watch becoming available for pre-order on Friday, it’s likely that we’ll see reviews of the device from a handful of people who’ve been given early access to the Watch at some point this week. I am not among them, but I wanted to share what I’m looking out for in these reviews when they do land, and which I think will make a big difference in how the Watch sells.

Notifications

I wrote a piece about Apple Watch and notifications a few weeks ago, and I think how the Watch handles notifications is critical, both because I think it’s an essential part of Apple’s position around intimate computing, but also because other smartwatches have handled notifications so badly. There are two ways to solve this notification problem:

  • Pass fewer notifications to the wrist – i.e., allow users to filter those notifications they want to receive on their Watch compared with their phone, either by app or ideally even more granularly
  • Deal with notifications better – allow users to manage these notifications more effectively when they do arrive. For example, notifications might arrive more discreetly, the user can dismiss them more easily, and/or the user can act on them effectively on the device. There are early indications that the Watch checks at least two of these boxes.

Battery life

I was tempted to put this first, because I think battery life on the Watch could put a huge damper on the success of the device if it’s not adequate. Given the reports we saw earlier this year, and Apple’s own public statements at the recent event about battery life, it’s still somewhat up in the air whether the broader group of users who now have their hands on the device will find it adequate. It’s clear it won’t last more than a single day for most users, but the question is whether it can effectively get through a whole day, especially for users with lots of notifications and other usage on the device. Related to all this is the experience of having to remove the Watch for charging nightly – does this end up being annoying, or is it something the user quickly gets used to?

Complexity / richness

These are two sides of the same coin. Following the Spring Forward event, a number of reporters worried that the Apple Watch was overly complex. That wasn’t my own experience, but I do think that the Apple Watch does far more at inception than the iPhone did, because it’s launching into a very different world. That could come across in two ways, however: as complexity, or simply as a rich experience. Complexity would manifest itself in user confusion, frustration, a sense of not being able to get things done. Richness would manifest itself in a sense of ease of use paired with a sense that there’s more to be discovered – in other words, the basic experiences work well and intuitively, but there’s more to the device than just those. It’s a tricky balance to strike, and so I’ll be looking out for how the early reviewers evaluate the Watch’s performance on this axis. The how-to videos on Apple’s Watch site suggest that there is a learning curve, but none of the interactions there look overly complex.

New interaction models

Closely tied to that, but also broader, is the introduction of new interaction models, both between the user and the Watch and between users wearing the Watch. The Digital Crown, Force Touch, and Digital Touch are all new on the Watch, and they need to work really well for users to embrace them and for interaction with the Watch to be both pleasant and engaging. But Force Touch is particularly interesting because it’s the only one of these three that’s likely to have applicability beyond the Watch. The new MacBook has a new touchpad which uses a similar concept and haptic feedback to simulate a click, which I found amazingly convincing. But there are also rumors (including new ones today) about future iPhones incorporating similar technology. If Force Touch works well on the Watch, it could be critical to future interactions on the iPhone and iPad as well, so it’s important that it works well.

Third-party Apps

It seems like every time I update my iPhone apps recently there’s a new update for an app that I use which adds Apple Watch compatibility. That’s a good sign, and suggests that there should be a pretty robust group of third-party apps available for the Watch both while reviews are happening and especially at launch. But it’s impossible for me to judge whether any of these apps are any good, and whether they add significantly to the experience I already enjoy with these apps on my phone. I’m curious to see whether there are enough of these apps, and whether they’re good enough to really give reviewers a sense of how much value they’ll add to the Watch. I think third-party apps will be a big part of what makes the Watch compelling, just as they have been for the iPhone and iPad, and so this is another key thing to look out for.

When the novelty wears off

The hardest thing for reviewers to gauge will likely be one of the most important factors in its ultimate success or failure – whether the Watch is compelling enough as an addition to the iPhone that its appeal lasts beyond the initial period when the novelty wears off. I don’t know how long reviewers will have had the Watch by the time they do their reviews, but it may well not be long enough to draw a conclusion on this. The Watch, like the iPad, lacks a single compelling selling point. Rather, I think each user will have to discover their own reasons why wearing one makes sense. I believe that the Watch’s success in the first year will depend heavily on the experience early adopters have with it, and how they communicate about this experience with their friends and family. If they find it compelling, they’ll be able to articulate the value proposition far better (and more convincingly) than any Apple ad or store associate could. And that will be key to Apple’s ability to go beyond the early adopters into the mainstream base of iPhone users.

Thoughts on Apple’s Spring Forward event

I had the opportunity to attend Apple’s Spring Forward event yesterday, and wanted to give my quick take on both the event and the brief hands-on I had with both the Apple Watch and the new MacBook. I’ve already written about Apple’s ResearchKit announcement over on Techpinions (for Insiders), and put out a brief comment for reporters yesterday too.

A surprising order

Apple often starts its keynotes with a minor update on retail and other statistics, and this one was no different in that respect. However, it then normally focuses on the main event, followed by one or more additional items – the legendary “one more thing” Steven Jobs was so fond of. What was so interesting to me here was that the Apple Watch was the focus of all the pre-event speculation, and yet it was held for last, almost an hour into the event, and was given only just over 30 minutes of its own. Much of that first hour was taken up with several other announcements: ResearchKit, the new MacBook, the Apple TV price drop and the HBO Now exclusive. I think the reason for this order was likely that Apple had already covered the basics of the Apple Watch in September, with little new information to be announced yesterday other than price and availability.

ResearchKit

See my Techpinions piece for a deeper dive into what I think ResearchKit means and represents for Apple, but in some ways this was the announcement I was most excited about. It suggests various things about Apple and its potential, not least its ability to marshall its considerable resources and its installed base not just in the service of selling more product, but also in the service of doing good in the world. I see this is as a first move beyond the hobbyist self-tracking that’s usually associated with health and fitness trackers and into something that’s truly meaningful in the field of medicine.

New MacBook

The new MacBook is interesting for three key reasons: the naming and positioning, the switch to USB-C, and the technological advances involved. Taking the last first, this is clearly an example of the way in which Apple can, when it wants to, move to extend its lead in key product categories through the use of focused, meaningful innovation. Just as the MacBook Air was a huge leap forward, and has arguably maintained a lead over the competition for several years, this new device is likely to set Apple’s computers apart for the foreseeable future. It’s both a great step forward in portability and a bet on the future – a wireless future which seems more and more possible all the time, and which is being held back at this point mostly by the poor performance of wireless charging. I’ve no doubt that at some point Apple will embrace that too, but for now it’s betting instead on making battery life so long that charging is an occasional rather than a constant concern on these devices.

The switch to USB-C, and the removal of almost all other ports, is the biggest visible representation of this bet on the future, and like the removal of CD/DVD drives and Ethernet ports, will cause some consternation and complaining about the need for various adapters and such. In a scenario where someone wants to power their deice while carrying on a Skype call using an external mic and display, a MacBook user will need to plug three different items into that one port, something Apple has clearly envisaged with its various adapters. But Apple has also been laying the groundwork for this move with a variety of wireless technologies including AirPlay and AirDrop, and various standardized technologies such as Bluetooth and WiFi obviously play a role too.

Naming and positioning was the last interesting aspect, in that this device obviously looked a lot like a MacBook Air from the moment it appeared on screen, but was never referred to as such and indeed fills the MacBook slot rather than the MacBook Air slot. My sense is that the MacBook Air filled a temporary role in Apple’s product portfolio, necessary as long as the technologies involved commanded a significant premium over the base level, but soon to disappear as the key attributes (thinness, lightness, massive battery life) make their way into the MacBook line. Over time, Apple is likely to go back to the 2×2 matrix Jobs trumpeted when he returned to Apple – pro and consumer laptops, in two flavors rather than three.

I had an opportunity to use the MacBook for a few minutes at the event, and it’s truly impressive in terms of the thinness and lightness combined with the amazing screen. The absence of a fan is a plus in some ways, but it’ll be worth watching the reviews for the tradeoffs in terms of performance. Others have pointed out that the specs and performance may be more on a par with Macs from several years ago than any of recent vintage, but I’m curious to see how real-world performance is. Talk of taptic feedback in the keynote had me concerned – I’ve never been a fan of haptics in devices – but the instantiation in the MacBook trackpad feels nothing like any haptic technology I’ve ever experienced before. It’s basically used to provide a second-layer clicking feeling for the “force click” even as the new trackpad doesn’t actually travel. It’s another one of those things that has to be experienced in person to be understood, but it’s very effective, along with the new on-screen functionality associated with that force click. The keyboard keys are different enough that they were tricky to use at first, with quite a few typos, at least partly because the keys are wider than in the past. But I’m guessing it’s the kind of thing you’d quickly get used to.

Apple TV and HBO

The Apple TV and HBO Now announcements are interesting partly for what was announced on Monday but at least partly also because of what they signal about the future. HBO Now has some potential, and as I’ve said elsewhere I think a big part of the success will depend on how effectively HBO can get people who currently use someone else’s HBO password for HBO Go to switch to paying $15 per month for their own service. At least part of that will be about making the first real efforts to discourage sharing of passwords, and I’m curious to see how they accomplish that. The price cut on the Apple TV is clearly a concession to the much-lower price of the various streaming sticks such as Chromecast – the new price is now 2x the Chromecast price, whereas it was previously around 3x the price.

But the more interesting thing is what trends these two moves presage. A shift to a cheaper Apple TV suggests either that a new device might be coming or that Apple’s focus going forward might be less about making money on the hardware an more about seeding a base of devices that can in future subscribe to a TV service from Apple (or perhaps a range of services from various providers). I’ve written on Techpinions about what I think it would take for Apple to really turn the Apple TV into something other than a hobby, and it’s really about providing a fully-fledged subscription TV service on the device (and of course on other Apple devices). Apple is no doubt taking a cut of the HBO Now revenues, and is handling billing and so on for the service. App Store revenue sharing would suggest at 30% cut, but I’ve no idea if that’s accurate. I do think this makes it more likely that we see some sort of TV service from Apple, or more deals like the HBO one that allow Apple to act as the aggregator of a loosely-bundled pay TV replacement, and I’ll probably write more about this.

Apple Watch

Lastly, then, we come to what was to have been the main focus of the event according to all the preview coverage, but what ended up being just the last act of a multi-act performance. The key new details were the pricing and availability details. These confirmed to me several things: the Watch Edition is important in terms of positioning and in terms of Apple’s foray into true luxury (and beyond simply affordable luxury, its past focus). But ultimately, it’ll be a marginal story, available only in few places and in small numbers, and sold at a price to make it affordable for very few people. It’s an interesting story, but essentially all the action will happen between $349 and $1100, in the two other categories. Interestingly, that might well make for an ASP very much in line with the iPhone and iPad, somewhere between $500 and $700 per unit.

I had a chance to wear the Watch (the stainless steel version) and play with it some at the event, and the first thing you notice is how much functionality is there. In my five-minute demo we barely scratched the surface of what the Watch does, and I think that’s illustrative of the challenge and the opportunity for the Watch. The use cases for different people will be at least as diverse as they are for the iPad, with third-party apps making up much of the value proposition. Apple talked about three broad things the Apple Watch does: timekeeping, intimate communication, and health and fitness tracking. And there will be some number of people for whom each of these is perhaps the main focus. But there will be many more who will end up using the Watch for a combination of things that doesn’t fit neatly into any of these three categories, but rather combines both pre-installed and third-party apps in a way that creates a mosaic of useful experiences. That makes it challenging to market, but as I’ve said before I think the early adopters who buy the Watch right off the bat will be a big part of how the device reaches the next wave of people, as they discover its usefulness and communicate it to others.

Edit: I’ve been asked by a Twitter follower to add a little more on my experience with the device. It fit well on my wrist, was comfortable and felt very much like the analog watch I normally wear. It instantly felt better than pretty much any of the other smartwatches I’ve worn, at least in part because of the quality and fit of the band. The materials looked great on the one I tried and the others. The screen was responsive and easy to use. The best way to think about the buttons is that pushing the digital crown is like pushing the home button on an iOS device – it always takes you back to the main screen. The other button, meanwhile, is the communication button, which is an interesting departure for Apple – a dedicated button on a personal device for a specific set of functions. There’s lots of swiping involved too, whether to get to Glances, to swipe between Glances, to navigate on the main apps screen, to select emoji and so on and so forth. Then the digital crown is also used for scrolling and zooming, in some cases with the digital crown offering vertical scrolling and swiping on the screen controlling horizontal scrolling. I’m not going to go into any more detail just because I think it’s worth waiting for a thorough review.

I’ll no doubt write more about all of this going forward, and I’ll have at least one other piece on Techpinions later this week (Thursday is my regular day for my public column), but would love to hear your thoughts in the comments, as always.

Quick Thoughts: Apple Watch and notifications

My thanks to Gregg Keizer of Computerworld, for sparking these ideas in a conversation we had earlier today ahead of Monday’s event.

I wrote a piece for Techpinions earlier in the week about the concept of intimacy as it relates to Apple Watch. In that piece, I wrote:

What I think intimacy in computing really means is going a level deeper on the personal side, and perhaps also stripping away some of the non-personal elements of the smartphone. The Apple Watch, then, becomes the truly personal device our smartphones have never quite been. Notifications come in noiselessly, communication with our Apple Watch-wearing significant other can be both more private and more individualized, the tasks we do on the Apple Watch can be limited just to those that are meaningful to us, leaving others for the smartphone, and so on.

I highlighted one phrase in bold there, because I think it’s critical both to the success of the Apple Watch specifically and to smartwatches in general. One of the criticisms of some of the other watches out there is that notifications are something of an all-or-nothing phenomenon: either you get utterly bombarded with notifications or you get none, but it’s been tough to get granular control. With the Apple Watch, this problem has the potential to get worse: with both traditional notifications and apps running on the Watch itself, there’s potential for even more of this. So it becomes all the more important that Apple get this right on the Watch. The ability to manage notifications and other activity on the Watch so that you only get notified for the things you really care about is a key value proposition. There have been a couple of pieces today about how the Apple Watch will handle notifications, but neither of them is clear enough to answer conclusively the question of how well the Watch deals with this issue.

I think there’s an analogy here to the early smartphones, which acted as task-specific extensions of our PCs. PCs were general purpose devices, on which we did essentially all our work. Early smartphones, and especially those made by BlackBerry, majored on email above all else, and allowed us to perform triage on this central form of communication on a dedicated device, leaving the rest for when we got back to our desks. I see the Watch performing a similar role in relation to smartphones, which have now become in some ways general purpose devices in a similar way to early PCs. If the Watch is to succeed, it will do so by allowing us to focus on those tasks that are most important to us, stripping away the rest of the stuff we’ll leave for our smartphones. And for many of us it will do this for our personal lives in much the way early smartphones did it for our work lives.

Motorola’s lessons for Samsung

I’ve been testing three of Motorola’s new devices for the last several days: the new Moto X and Moto G smartphones, and the Moto 360 smartwatch. I don’t do traditional reviews – there are plenty of sites out there that do those well – but I thought I’d share some of my thoughts about these devices, briefly, but also about what they can teach us more broadly, and tech Samsung specifically.

Moto X

Last year’s version of the Moto X was already a very good device in a number of ways, and this year’s version fixes several problems: the price/performance ratio feels a lot better, the materials and build make for a more premium experience, and the camera is a lot more competitive. I’ve been using the Moto X as my main phone for the last few days, and I’ve really enjoyed it. The camera still isn’t as good as the iPhone camera, or arguably the Galaxy S5 camera, especially in low light. And the digital shutter mechanism still frustrates me by taking pictures when I’m trying to change the focus point. But it’s an awful lot better, and I’ve taken some nice pictures with it, including this one:

IMG_20140914_162715In short, the Moto X is much better on the things it was bad at. But it’s also got even better at the things its predecessor was good at – namely the little software customizations that added significantly to the stock Android experience without taking it over, adding huge numbers of visual customizations and tweaks, or overloading the device with gimmicks and widgets. What Motorola has done really well in these devices is creating in its software elements that significantly add value to Android without feeling like they’re trying to replace it. They’re done in such a way that they feel like they are – or should be – part of the core OS, both visually and in terms of their functionality and integration into the OS itself. Unless you’ve used stock Android, it would be hard to see where Android itself ends and Motorola’s enhancements to it begin.

In many respects, this is just the sort of thing Samsung should have been working on over the last few years, to set its handsets apart against the flood of other Android phones. Instead, it’s focused on gimmicks – features that are eye-catching and make for good demos, but that don’t really make life easier or improve upon the core Android experience. If Google were keeping Motorola, I would say these features should slowly work their way back into the core Android experience as Motorola invents new ones. Under Lenovo, I wonder to what extent these innovations will continue and to what extent Lenovo will embrace them at a corporate level and build them into its other devices too. If it’s smart, it will realize what it’s getting here and fully embrace it.  Continue reading

Techpinions post: Apple Watch impact on smartwatch market

This week’s Techpinions post is a follow-up to my post from a few weeks ago about market prospects for smartwatches, off the back of my smartwatches report. I revisit my conclusions both from that report and from the previous post in light of Apple’s forthcoming Watch. As you may recall, I’ve been extremely bearish about the smartwatch market absent some major catalyst, and Apple’s entry into the market always had the potential to be that catalyst.

The concluding paragraph from the piece is below:

For all these reasons, the Apple Watch will be just the kind of catalyst I talked about in the conclusion to my report. It won’t drive majority adoption of smartwatches any time soon, but it promises to fix several of the key demand- and supply-side barriers to smartwatch adoption, and will be a huge hit for Apple. At the same time, it will provide a boost to other vendors, who will have to compete largely around the Android opportunity and the lower end of the market. Exactly how big the boost to the market will be is hard to estimate until we know more about the watch as we approach its release. But we could easily go from single digit millions of shipments per year to tens of millions in the wake of its launch.

You can read the whole piece, including the reasoning behind that conclusion, here.

New report and post on smartwatches

My firm, Jackdaw Research, has just published a report for subscription clients on the topic of smartwatches, entitled Smartwatches: Market Prospects. It features several consumer surveys which gauge demand for current and future smartwatch features, and evaluates the current offerings in the smartwatch market. I’m bearish on smartwatches as they currently stand – demand for the features they offer is weak, and that demand is currently being met by weak supply too, as all of the current offerings are flawed by virtue of the compromises they make between battery life, displays, performance and usability. The market is likely to remain small unless something changes – one of those, of course, being a disruptive entry to the market by Apple.

My Techpinions post today summarizes some of the key findings of the report. Here’s a quote:

Measured against these criteria, the current crop of smartwatches on sale does very poorly. I did my own ratings as part of my report, and I ended up with scores which were barely above 50% across these seven categories. Unlike most reviewers, I don’t see the Pebble as the clear leader in this market – in fact, all the devices ended up clustered around a very small range of unimpressive scores. If we’re really honest with ourselves, we should expect much more of these devices before we embrace them, and unless they do more we’re not likely to see them sell above current levels.

The UK’s Guardian newspaper also did an extensive write-up on the report, which you can find here.

There’s more information about the report, and an opportunity to buy it directly, on the Jackdaw Research website. The report is available as part of our subscription research service for clients, and is $500 for non-clients.

Apple will make several wearables, but not a watch

Back in January, I did a post titled “Why Apple may not launch an iWatch anytime soon.” The gist of the piece was this: that Apple doesn’t enter markets particularly early, but rather enters at the point where the technology is ready for it to provide the kind of transformative product it’s used to disrupt the music player, smartphone and tablet markets in the past. At the time, my conclusion was that Apple would likely stay out of the wearables business entirely, until such time as the underlying technology was ready. However, given the other things we’ve seen from Apple in the last few months, I now believe it’s very likely we’ll see something in this category from Apple in the near future, but it won’t be a watch, and it’s likely that it will actually be several products rather than just one.

Smartwatches aren’t delivering on the promise, but the promise is flawed too

There are two big problems with the smartwatch market as it stands: firstly, the underlying technology doesn’t seem to be ready, which means it doesn’t deliver on the promise of the category. But secondly, the promise itself simply isn’t all that compelling for the vast majority of the general population. There’s a sense that if someone can just crack the smartwatch category it’ll suddenly explode, but I’m just not sure I agree with that. It still fundamentally seems like a solution in search of a problem at this point. But the coverage – as is so often the case – is driven by a very small number of people who likely are in the target segment and therefore talk up both the promise and the reality well beyond what’s justified.

A different approach solves some fundamental problems

For all these reasons, I’m still skeptical that Apple will release a product that’s identifiable as a watch. If I think about the thorniest technological challenge with smartwatches, it’s the fact that you’re having to squeeze both a fairly smart CPU and a decent display, and the battery to power them, into what has to be a very small form factor. That problem essentially goes away if you see wearables less as notification screens and more as off-device sensors, as Apple seems to, in contrast to Google:

Android Wear vs Apple HealthKit

If wearables are merely providing sensor extensions to the smartphone rather than trying to replicate smartphone functions, you can do away with the bright, big screen and the powerful CPU, and strip both down significantly. On some wearables, you might retain a small display, but it’s entirely possible that others would do away with it entirely. Put in the relevant sensors, a Bluetooth LE radio and a small CPU, and you’d be done. This would allow you to make the device significantly smaller and sleeker, make the battery last much longer, and also allow for many other form factors that could be worn in different places around the body. Continue reading

Why Apple might break its launch pattern with wearables

Apple has established a pattern over the last six years with regard to releasing SDKs to developers ahead of releasing new software and hardware products to customers. The original iPhone didn’t follow this pattern, not having an App Store and therefore no SDK either. But since March 2008, Apple has given developers several months’ lead time to create apps which are optimized for its newest hardware and software releases. The times between SDK release and customer availability of the related products is shown in the chart below:

iOS SDK to customer availability - 560px

The exact length of time between SDK release and customer availability has bounced around a bit. When new iPhones were released in June, the SDKs arrived first in March, and then in April, slowly whittling down the time available for developers to create apps. Then, in 2011, Apple moved the whole schedule back a few months, with SDK release in the summer, and the new iPhone landing in the fall, and it stretched out the time in-between at the same time, moving it back to around 130 days. The last two releases have both seen exactly 102 days from SDK to customer availability. When Apple last introduced an entirely new hardware category, in 2010, it gave would-be iPad developers just over two months’ lead time.

As we approach the possible launch of new hardware in at least one category (wearables) and possibly two (smart home), it’s worth thinking about how this pattern might apply to these new categories. What’s most striking this time around is that I think it’s entirely possible that Apple has already done the SDK releases that will power these devices, and we therefore won’t see the long delay between the announcement of new hardware and its availability to the public. Apple has already laid the groundwork for new wearable devices as follows:

  • In iOS 7, announced in June 2013 and available since September 2013, Apple tweaked the Notification Center and augmented Bluetooth capabilities to support better off-device notifications, for example on a smartwatch or similar device (Pebble and other third party smartwatches already make use of these)
  • in iOS 8, announced at this year’s WWDC and presumably available in September 2014, Apple created HealthKit and the companion Health app, which can capture data from sensors in wearables and store and analyze them for users.

As such, depending on Apple’s implementation of wearables, it’s possible that it’s already given developers all the tools they need to create apps that will take advantage of whatever Apple releases. There may not be an “iWatch” SDK as such. If that’s the case, we could see the pattern shown in the chart above blown away completely with the release of wearable devices from Apple. Or, put another way, Apple has already started the clock ticking by releasing the SDKs to developers, and now we just need to wait for the other shoe to drop. And of course, if you believe the rumors about the smart home, the very same pattern would apply there – the necessary tools are all already out there in developers’ hands in the form of HomeKit.

If Apple is indeed planning an iWatch rather than something similar, it might need an SDK of its own for the on-device display, but if – as I suspect – what Apple ends up releasing looks a lot less like a watch and more like a much simpler device, then I think all the pieces may already be in place. On Monday, I’ll talk more about why I think what Apple releases might not be a watch at all, and why I think there will probably be several devices rather than just one.