Report suggests the Apple Watch is failing | TechRadar
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I imagine it's a tough sell even for Apple. It really is a 'luxury' device.

Any other smartwatch maker would tear their own arm off for sales of 5000 units a day but apparently for Apple that's 'disastrous'. I'd be surprised if any other smartwatch is selling 5000 units a month. They've sold literally millions of the things and made every other manufacturer in the market look like a clueless idiot. I guess they should just pack up shop and go home, right?

'Thing's sales slow after initial burst of demand from interested shoppers'. I can't imagine that's been true of another product at any point in the past /sarcasm.

Jesus effing wept.

The sales curve for successful products goes up before it goes down.

It would be interesting to know what level of market saturation they've managed - it's compatible with iPhone 5 and above.
Also, even the very cheapest one costs £299. For £20 more you can get a whole new iPad Mini. As previously mentioned that's a pretty hard sell for a lot of people.

They are objectively out of the budget of a large majority. The only one I've seen in the wild was a present which is an interesting twist on the 'value' equation. In any sense though, it's pointless to say 'well, it's almost as expensive as an iPad/PS4/etc'. It doesn't share functionality with any other form of device, so owning them is not mutually exclusive. You can't wear an iPad on your wrist.

It's fair to compare it's price/VFM with other devices that have roughly the same functionality - so the android wear watches, pebbles and 'smarter' fitness bands - but there's really no point comparing it with anything other than those. It's really, really expensive compared to a mars bar and really, really cheap compared to a Ferrari but what does that actually tell us?

As to the notion that it could be saturating it's market.. I know they have sold a large number of them but I suspect the number of compatible devices - the last two generations of iPhone - is an order of magnitude greater. I suspect the Apple watch's market penetration is in the order of 10%...

For many people - at leats the ones in Apples target market - hasn't the phone pretty much taken over from the watch anyway?

I don't quite know what Apple's target demographic for the watch is tbh. I do certainly know people who don't wear a watch and look at their phone when they want to know the time. But that's a watch whose only function is to tell you the time. I smartwatch - be it an LG, MS or Apple one - does much more than that. It's not really 'a watch' in any real sense tbh, it's a second display for your phone that happens to be on your wrist, and we previousy called 'things on your wrist that had a display' watches, so the name stuck.

My problem with the Apple watch is that I can't see the relevance. I gave up wearing a watch back in the 80s when I realised that most of the time at home or at work I was surrounded by other devices that already performed the watch's main function of telling the time, and in most other situations for me knowing what time it was had become irrelevant.

I could see the point of a smart watch if it was small and self-contained, but the Apple watch is neither. It is IMO a big ugly lump on your wrist that still needs an iPhone to be of any use. If I have to have an iPhone anyway why do I need an Apple Watch?

Thats the point I'm making above. Because 'things we wear on our wrists with displays' have always been 'watches', they called the gadgets 'smartwatches'. Here's what people need to realise - a smartwatch is as much about being a watch as a smartphone is about being a phone i.e. often not very much at all. A 'smartwatch' is, as I say, a subsidiary display and control for a smartphone. The fact it tells you what time it is is a purely incidental function. And in fact it's a function most smartwatches are actually quite bad at - much worse than a standard mechanical watch.

You're quite right to ask 'why is this smart watch a better watch than the watch I used to have, which I got rid of?' For that specific function it isn't, in fact it's worse. The point of a smartwatch is all the other things it does, which you may or may not need, but that's an entirely different question. I personally think they could easily do away with the 'time display' function in smart watches, and in fact they possibly should, because it's breeding this as-it-stands fairly understandable misconception.


I've seen one on someone's wrist and it actually looks much smaller than you think it would from photos. It just looks like a normal watch. Some smart watches are effing gigantic but the Apple one just isn't. In fact my friend was wearing it - in good weather so with short sleeves - for about a week before I noticed it was an apple watch rather than the watch he previously wore.


Ugly I'll give you - it's simply not as pretty as a good 'dress watch'. The best answer to the question 'do I need a smart watch' is not 'how many times a day do I need to know what time it is', it's this question - 'How many times a day do I take my smartphone out of my pocket and look at the screen, then put it back in my pocket without actually interacting with it much?' if you don't do that often, you don't need a smartwatch. If you do, a smartwatch might actually be quite a useful tool for you.

Smart watches are, in my opinion, a perfect example 'YMMV'. Watches and more so smartwatches are deeply personal devices, so whether you need one or not is very much a decision you have to base around yourself as an individual. Anyone who doesn't know you very well who says either you definitely do need one or you definitely don't need one is a fool.

Yours, a non-Apple smartwatch user.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head except for one thing I'd change. When you said "how many times do you take your phone out to look at the time and do nothing else".

I would change that to... How many times do you take your watch out to do nothing but look at the time and find yourself still browsing around 5 minutes later.

Same for notifications. Ooh! A Facebook notification... 5 mins later still browsing Facebook.

I have always been tempted to buy an Apple Watch (or any smart watch) and last week I borrowed the work Apple Watch and I've been wearing no it since Tuesday.

The thing I've noticed is how much I haven't been going to my phone for notifications. A quick tap and its dealt with.

Although, the thing that I have noticed more than anything is the activity tracker and goals. Working as a developer means I pretty much get to work, sit down for 8 hours and then leave. The watch face has three concentric circles that represent different activity goals. I've been noticing them more and standing up at work etc... (Especially when the watch tells me to. Lol!)

Also, the watch really is small. When I got this one my first comment was "ah, I think the larger watch would suit me better than this one". The one I was wearing was already the larger one.

Here's a pic...



I've also had no difficulty in reading the time on it. I currently have it set to the clock you can see (the colour and complications can be customised). There are also various other analog and digital style faces. As well as some other fancy ones. Lol!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think that sums it up. I take my company smartphone out of my bag once a day to check it and make sure the battery doesn't need charging (I charge it every 3 - 4 days).

My private smartphone sits on the desk during the day and on the worktop at home evenings and weekends. It has "blink", which means that if it is taken out of a pocket or something moves in front of the sensor on the front, it displays simple status information, so just waving occasionally in front of it means it shows the date, time, weather and whether there are any messages, without actually turning on (OLED display, so background remains black and it just shows some white text, it doesn't use much energy).

So, for that, a smartwatch doesn't make much sense.

The sensor bands, like Fitbit, and combi devices like the Microsoft Band, make more sense as they actually do something useful when they are on your wrist and not being looked at. Their batteries also tend to last a bit longer.

That said, I'm still using my 18 year old Seiko at the moment.

By my standards the Apple Watch is really big. If find nearly all mens watches horribly oversized and they seem to function mainly as wrist weights that also happen to tell the time. I do own a watch, which I use occasionally when I go away and need to have something to tell me the time that isn't going to run out of power at a critical moment, and for that I have a Swatch Skin that is about as minimalist in terms of size as you can get and still be able to easily tell them time.