With Series 4, the Apple Watch Era Begins
It’s thinner, but it’s going to be huge
When 9to5Mac published what appears to be a promo shot of the Apple Watch Series 4 two weeks before its public unveiling on September 12, it confirmed two things that Apple observers were already almost certain of — that the body of the Series 4 would be thinner and would have a significant increase in usable display area. But seeing the image above has left me feeling confident about what many would consider to be a bold prediction:
With the Series 4, the Apple Watch Era is now upon us.
While Apple doesn’t announce how many Watches it sells — instead lumping them in its “Other Products” category with AirPods, Beats headphones, and HomePods — Apple has said that the Watch has enjoyed significant year-on-year growth ever since it launched, and I can anecdotally say that the Watch is quite popular. With its iconic design (usually paired with a now-iconic tuck-under silicone strap), they’re easy to spot, and I see them everywhere, whether it’s the grocery store, airports, restaurants, gyms, college campuses, hotels, malls, or out on the street. What’s even more surprising is the diversity of the people I see them on. Clearly not just for tech enthusiasts, I see Watches on high school kids, older people, men, women, people of every race, hip people at brunch, gym rats, waiters, businesspeople, tourists, and store clerks.
However, a recent report revealed that 90% of people buying Apple Watches have opted for the less expensive Series 1 instead of the Series 3, with its improved system-in-package (SiP), optional cellular connectivity, advanced W2 Bluetooth connectivity, and GPS.
While this might seem like bad news for Apple, I actually see it as a good sign. People buying the S1 are not techies and hardcore Apple fans, but people who are intrigued by the idea of smartwatches and probably heard good things about them from friends and coworkers, yet weren’t prepared to pay more for the latest technology in a product they were not convinced they needed. But considering the Watch’s astronomical 97% customer satisfaction score, as well as what I’ve seen and heard from delighted Watch wearers (including my wife, who was initially indifferent to the idea of smartwatches), I’d wager that anyone with a Watch today will almost definitely buy another, either immediately with the Series 4 or in the next 1–3 years. Once you experience the benefits and features of the Apple Watch — especially the fitness tracking and notifications — it’s hard to imagine going even a single day without one on your wrist.
This is a big reason why, starting with the Series 4, I believe that the Apple Watch Era is upon us.
Fence Sitters and Upgraders
For many people who want an Apple Watch but haven’t bought one, a big reason has been the size of its body and display. While I love my 42mm aluminum S2, I’ll admit that its 11.4mm thickness is somewhat on the bulbous side, which would be felt even more acutely by those with smaller wrists, especially women. A friend of mine, who is a die-hard Apple fan and somewhat of a watch aficionado, has held off on getting a Watch because he feels that not only is the Watch too thick, but its face is too small — and I can imagine other people (especially larger men like my friend) might feel the same.
The S4, which marks Apple’s first significant redesign of the Watch, should get these interested potential customers off the fence.
By increasing the amount of usable screen area (though without increasing the screen’s overall size), those waiting for a larger watch face will feel like they got one because the screen can actually display larger watch faces, larger graphics, and more information. If the Watch’s thickness was the one thing that kept you from buying one, the S4 with its thinner body will feel like the version you’ve been waiting for. The S4’s physical redesign could potentially do for the Watch what the iPhone 6, the first iPhone with a “large” screen, did for iPhones, releasing a flood of new users who had considered buying the device, but were waiting until Apple made one in the size they wanted.
In addition to new users, the S4 will be incredibly tempting for those with Series 2 Watches or older. The first-generation Watch (which some call Series 0) was severely underpowered, bordering on unusable, and was essentially a beta product for early adopters. S2’s improved SiP (which was also added to the S0 body to become the Series 1), the much-needed watchOS 2 update/redesign, and a brighter screen got the Watch to a satisfactory level of usability, though Siri and dictation could still be a bit laggy and unreliable. But with the addition of GPS and improved waterproofing in the S2, the Watch at least became a legitimate, serious fitness tracker.
If you own a Series 0–2 but didn’t upgrade to the S3, you’re missing out on the cellular capability that makes the Watch a truly standalone product, allowing you to leave your iPhone at home or in the car without fearing that you’ll miss an important notification or message. You don’t have access to 45 million songs on Apple Music streamed right from your wrist if you decide to go for a run, hike, or bike ride without your iPhone. You also don’t have the S3’s improved SiP that makes Siri and dictation instantaneous, or the improved speaker that lets Siri speak its responses back to you. Upgrading from Series 0–2 to S3 would be a significant improvement, but with its nearly identical body, it might give you the feeling that you’re simply getting the same Watch but with updated internals, not an entirely new product.
Since the S4 will include all of the S3 upgrades and more, as well as a “bigger” screen and sleeker body, S4 will be a huge improvement over Series 0–2 that will be very hard for Watch users to resist. So in addition to new users who have been waiting to get their first Watch, I predict that millions of S0–1 owners will upgrade to S4 immediately, with millions more S2 users (like me) upgrading this year or in 2019 for the S5. And there will probably be a cheaper, hopefully upgraded version of the S1 (maybe with the S3 SiP?) for people who still aren’t sure that a smartwatch will find a place in their lives or can’t afford the S4.
All this means that there are over 10 million people — both current and new Watch users — who will be ready to buy the S4 on day one, with millions more who will upgrade in a year or sooner.
This is the boom that will launch the Apple Watch Era.
The Virtuous Triangle: Apple Watch, AirPods, and Apple Music
Along with the success of the Watch, Apple has another “Other Products” hit on its hands with AirPods, the company’s truly wireless earbuds. Again, Apple does not break out the numbers for AirPods sales, but like the Watch, the anecdotal evidence is undeniable. The iconic white AirPods can be seen everywhere in the ears of a wide variety of people, and had a particularly strong showing at the 2018 World Cup despite Apple not being an official sponsor of the event. Some have called AirPods one of the best first-generation products Apple has ever made, and AirPods have the customer satisfaction score to prove it. A second-generation version of AirPods and two years of manufacturing experience that will ease the delays and supply constraints that initially plagued the first-gen AirPods should boost sales even more.
Apple Music has also been a success story for Apple, with subscriptions to the music-streaming service reportedly eclipsing rival Spotify in the US. Apple Music is a big reason why Apple believes that its Services division, which has been experiencing strong double-digit year-on-year growth, will be an increasingly important profit generator as consumers wait longer to upgrade their iPhones.
Cordless, virtually weightless, and with excellent battery life, AirPods add a wonderful sense of freedom to the listening experience, even if you still need to be within Bluetooth range of your phone. But what if you didn’t need your phone nearby, and could instead have your music and podcasts beamed to your AirPods from a cordless, virtually weightless wearable device that is always within Bluetooth range? And why limit yourself to whatever songs and podcasts you remembered to store locally on that wearable device when you could stream any podcast and nearly every song ever recorded from the cloud?
An Apple Watch enhances both AirPods and Apple Music, providing the third point of what could be called a virtuous triangle. If you subscribe to Apple Music, it makes a lot of sense to get AirPods. If you own AirPods, it makes a lot of sense to get a Watch. If you have a Watch and AirPods, it makes a lot of sense to subscribe to Apple Music. Each product in this virtuous triangle adds value to the other two, and owning one product in the triangle encourages customers to buy the other two to complete the triangle.
When the Watch first debuted in April of 2015, it was limited and underpowered, offered unproven benefits, didn’t have cellular capability, emphasized the wrong features, and Apple Music and AirPods didn’t exist. In 2018, the Watch is a much-improved fourth-generation product, offers cellular connectivity, has found its focus with health and notifications, has a more attractive design, and Apple Music and AirPods are successful, refined products that increase the Watch’s value. For iPhone users who have Apple Music and/or AirPods, there will be no more Watch features worth waiting for, and no questions left to be answered. The verdict will be in: it’s time to get an Apple Watch.
Alone In An Untapped Market
Tech analysts will sometimes talk about the smartwatch market as if there are several companies competing for smartwatch dominance. However, the truth is that there isn’t a smartwatch market as much as there is an Apple Watch market, where Apple sells the vast majority of smartwatches (41% of the market) and collects most of the profits, while a handful of other companies — Samsung, Fitbit, Xiaomi, Garmin, and a few fashion brands — fight over what’s left. While Apple is racing forward with Watch — reporting 50% year-on-year growth from 2016 to 2017, adding features, refining/focusing watchOS, offering stylish new straps every season, and now giving its case a refresh — other smartwatch makers seem to be floundering, either trying to decide if smartwatches are really a thing worth pursuing or working hard with little to show for it.
Fitbit, formerly an industry leader synonymous with fitness trackers, saw its stock plummet in 2016–2017, bottoming out at a current price of $5-$6 per share as the company continues its struggle to make a profit and even continue existing. Fitbit’s share of the smartwatch market rebounded in 2018 to 21% with the introduction of their new Versa and Ionic models, but the inexpensive, feature-limited step/calorie counters that fueled Fitbit’s initial dominance seem to be going the way of flip phones and Flip cameras. Fossil and Xiaomi’s Amazfit brand each claimed 4% of the market, Garmin had 3%, and Samsung could only muster a measly 2%.
Samsung is attempting to hit reset by changing the name of their poor-selling Gear smartwatches to Galaxy Watch to signal their abandonment of their proprietary Tizen OS and draft off of the popularity of their flagship Galaxy phones. Google is changing the name of Android Wear OS, which failed to gain traction amongst Android users, to Wear OS (which Galaxy Watch will run) to indicate that their watches will also work with iPhones. Adding to this sorry situation is the fact that Qualcomm, which basically has a monopoly on chips for Wear OS, seems to have little enthusiasm for smartwatches in general and has not updated their Snapdragon Wear 2100 SiP in over two and a half years, effectively hamstringing a large section of the market. As Ars Technica’s Sam Rutherford wrote in March, “almost all of the big Android Wear device makers such as Motorola, LG, and Asus have given up on the platform, leaving Android Wear in the hands of fashion brands that neither have the vision nor the technological know-how to advance smartwatch tech.” (Qualcomm claims they are working on a new chip that will appear in wearables for the holidays.)
Meanwhile, Apple became the world’s top-selling watchmaker in 2017, outselling every Swiss watch company — including venerable brands like Rolex, Omega, and even Swatch — combined. And Apple’s best-in-class silicon team puts out new, dramatically improved custom SiPs for the Watch every year.
But despite the success of the Apple Watch, smartwatches are still a largely untapped market with huge potential for growth and innovation, and possibly even serving as a pared-down smartphone replacement (more on this later). I firmly believe that the smartwatch has an incredibly bright future, and Apple is currently the sole owner of that future, putting more distance between itself and competitors who are still trying to decide who and what they are, how to make a profit, or whether they should drop out of the race entirely.
Who Needs A Smartwatch?
I feel certain that the Series 4 will usher in the Apple Watch Era, which will see the Watch explode in popularity over the next few years. But I can imagine that many of you reading this may disagree with me, either questioning the timeframe or the entire premise. Maybe you feel that the technology isn’t robust enough yet, the prices are too high, or the uses are too limited, which are all reasonable concerns — though I’ll explain why I disagree with all of them. But most doubts about the Apple Watch becoming a blockbuster, game-changing device can all be condensed into one question:
“Does anyone really need a smartwatch?”
A similar question was asked when Apple unveiled the first iPhone in 2007, which marked the beginning of the Smartphone Era. Back then, and for a few years after, few people felt they needed a smartphone — they were seen as being just for tech enthusiasts, the wealthy, and business people who needed Blackberries to answer work emails. Everyone else was fine with their cellular phones, which could make calls, send text messages, and could often take pictures or play music. Before that, many wondered why anyone needed cell phones, since humans had gotten along perfectly fine for thousands of years without them. The idea of someone being able to call you no matter where you were seemed like an annoyance bordering on a nightmare. But as is often the case with groundbreaking technologies, we wonder why people would need them right up until we couldn’t live without them.
Naturally, no one “needs” a smartwatch, just as no one needs a smartphone, a computer, the internet, a microwave, or most anything aside from food, water, shelter, and air. But there are things like smartphones that people need to live comfortably in the modern world, and I think smartwatches will soon be one of those things.
So let me list some of the people who might “need” a smartwatch that’s as good as an Apple Watch.
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- Me
I’ve worn my Series 2 Nike+ Apple Watch every single day since buying it in September 2016. Putting it on is the first thing I do when I get out of bed in the morning, and placing it on its charging stand is the last thing I do before going to sleep. I love the fitness tracking and coaching (they’ve helped me lose nearly ten stubborn pounds) and use the Watch for numerous things every day, including timers, checking weather, reminders, Apple Pay, messaging, grocery lists, controlling audio playback, calendar appointments, and Pokémon GO. I wouldn’t want to spend a waking hour without my Watch.
2. People Who Care About Their Health/Fitness
This ranges from serious athletes who want to compete at the highest level to people who simply want to improve/maintain their health or shed a few pounds. Considering that roughly 160 million American adults are overweight or obese, and that obesity-linked diseases have replaced smoking as the nation’s number one cause of premature deaths, that’s a lot of potential Watch buyers. It’s no wonder why health insurers are trying to reduce medical costs and promote fitness by subsidizing Apple Watches for their customers.
2A. People With Serious Medical Conditions
More stories have been emerging about the Watch saving people’s lives by notifying wearers that their heart rate is dangerously elevated when they appear to be at rest. In many of these cases, the person who was saved by the alert did not even know they had a serious medical condition. But if I knew someone who had been diagnosed with a potentially serious condition, I would definitely recommend they get a Watch.
3. People Who Are Often In Dangerous Situations
There have also been stories about people who have been in dangerous situations and have used their Watches to call for help when their phones were out of reach. Kacie Anderson used her Watch when her car (with her 9-month-old son aboard) was struck by a drunk driver, and Mary Dovgin was able to call first responders with her Watch while struggling to save her drowning husband. I would recommend the Watch for people who work in dangerous professions, drive a lot for work, enjoy potentially dangerous hobbies, or live or work in high-crime areas. I would also include women on college campuses, where sexual assault is sadly common.
Below is a video made by Apple using unsolicited letters from real people around the world whose lives have been improved — and sometimes saved — because of their Apple Watches.
4. People Who Want To Spend Less Time On Their Smartphones
Smartphone addiction has been getting a lot of attention recently, and both Apple and Android have responded with new features in their OSes that let users monitor or limit how much time they spend on their phones or using certain apps. The Watch accomplishes the same goal by allowing you to quickly check, address, or dismiss notifications without getting distracted by all the apps on your phone vying for your attention. Because of its small screen and battery, the Watch is designed for short, “lightweight” interactions lasting only a few seconds — you actually can’t waste time on it. And if you get a cellular Watch, you can take the ultimate step to reduce your time spent looking at your phone — keeping it far away from you — while still staying connected.
5. People Who Can’t Look At Their Phones While At Work
I’ve been surprised by how many waiters and retail workers I’ve seen wearing Apple Watches. After all, the Watch isn’t cheap, and these are generally not high-paying jobs. But the Watch makes perfect sense for the tens of millions of Americans who work in the retail and service industries, or any other job where you can’t or aren’t allowed to check your phone. Mike Murphy of Quartz spoke with “airline attendants, bartenders, waiters, baristas, shop owners, and (very politely) TSA employees who all said the same thing: The Apple Watch keeps them in touch when they can’t be on their phones at work.”
6. Women and People With Small Wrists
As mentioned before, Apple Watch can be a vital tool if you need to call for help, which makes it a particularly good purchase for women who are concerned about their safety. But if you are a woman, a man with smaller wrists, or a younger person, the Apple Watch is essentially your only choice for an attractive, full-featured smartwatch that won’t make you feel like you’re wearing a hockey puck on your wrist. Most other smartwatch makers either can’t miniaturize their technology for smaller cases, or they are stuck in the mindset that male tech nerds with larger wrists are the only ones who want smartwatches. For whatever reason, this has left Apple as the only smartwatch maker catering to a demographic that makes up half of the world’s population.
7. People Who Want A Tech Upgrade But Don’t Need A New Phone
As the smartphone industry has matured and smartphones have gotten better, people are waiting longer to replace their phones. However, if you want additional features and newer technology but are not yet ready to pay big bucks to replace your perfectly good iPhone, the Apple Watch might be the solution. The Watch enhances your current iPhone (Series 3 is compatible as far back as 2014’s iPhone 6) with better heart/fitness tracking, a greatly improved notification system, Siri on your wrist, and easier access to information and apps, all for roughly half the price of a new iPhone, and way less if you buy your Watch on sale or refurbished.
8. Fans of Smart Assistants and Home Automation
For Google and Amazon, if you want easy access to a smart assistant or smart home automation, you should either carry your phone all the time or buy several potentially creepy, always-listening (and maybe always-recording) microphone/speakers and place them all over your house. But if you use Apple’s HomeKit and Siri, you can accomplish the same thing with an Apple Watch, which you always have on you and only listens when you want it to.
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I’d guess that a majority of smartphone users fit at least one of these eight categories, and I’d guess that in a few short years, many of those people who use iPhones will have an Apple Watch. But if you’re an Android user, you may still be waiting for someone to make a decent smartwatch that runs Wear OS.
Paring Down
The smartphone will surely go down in history as one of the most important inventions in human history, and for good reason. But as we begin recognizing and trying to deal with the negative side effects of smartphones — inability to focus, declining social skills, increased alienation, social media-induced depression — it’s becoming clear that maybe smartphones are too good. They provide too much connection, too many distractions, too many reasons not to look up and observe and interact with the people and places around you. But if we consider getting rid of our smartphones, or even leaving them at home for the evening, we lose all of the terrific services a smartphone provides, including ones that keep us in touch with our loved ones and could potentially save our lives. So we keep them with us, their smooth bodies and shining screens forever tempting us with a universe of distractions that are just a glance and a tap away. And too often, we don’t have the self-control to resist.
But what if, instead of fruitlessly fantasizing about giving up one of the most useful devices in world history, we could simply temper its negative qualities? What if we could pare down the smartphone experience, giving us easy access to its most useful and necessary functions while keeping its more frivolous, time-wasting distractions at a distance that requires some extra thought and effort to engage with? What if it only took a small, unobtrusive device to keep us connected to what’s most important to us — our loved ones, our health, our calendar appointments, the day’s weather — while omitting the things that pull us away from the present, increase our FOMO, and ultimately degrade our quality of life?
This is what a good smartwatch like the Apple Watch can do, and that’s why the time is right for the Apple Watch Era to begin. Whether we realize it or not, we’re ready for it. And for the sake of our mental health in the smartphone age, we need it.
