Omnifocus kicks Overcast out of 3rd place. DarkSky remains people’s favorite, Fantastical is #2.
Wristly Apple Watch Insider’s Report #32 — December 8th , 2015
Those of us who had hoped that watchOS 2.0 would bring a lot of great new apps to the Apple Watch platform remain disappointed for now.
We’re not sure if this is due to a lack of enthusiasm by 3rd party developers or if they’re waiting for the next generation of hardware before investing further in the platform. As independent observers we can only assess a lack of innovation. We will dive further into this topic at the first Glance event this Thursday and report back next week. Until then, let’s review the survey’s results.
For the 3rd time in a row, DarkSky and Fantastical remain #1 and #2 in our People’s Choice awards. The only slight surprise here is Omnifocus displacing Overcast from 3rd position. Omnifocus is an award winning task management utility and exploits watchOS 2.0 natively and efficiently.
This week’s research focused on indirectly assessing Apple Watch’s progress in market penetration. This was measured by asking our panelists to assess how many people around them were also wearing Apple Watch, and how regularly or not they would communicate with them using the Apple Watch exclusive capabilities of Tap, Sketch and Heartbeat.
The first step was to assess how many contacts our panel have set up in their “Friends” list. For newbies of Apple Watch, the “Friends” list is brought to the Watch’s face by clicking the side button.
Apple Watch Friends vs iPhone Favorites
The number of contacts in our panelists’ “Friends” list on Apple Watch remains consistent with our June findings. The new average number of contacts remains at 8.5 with the median at 9 (the maximum option for this question was set at 12 friends).
However, about 12% of our panelists report having now expanded into multiple lists, a new feature of watchOS 2.0, with one panelist reporting a high of 60 contacts.
Additionally, when asked to compare their Apple Watch Friend’s list to their equivalent iPhone Favorites list, only a quarter of the panelists report a significant difference between the two.
The primary reasons stated for this were adding friends or family members who also owned an Apple Watch, and/or selecting contacts with whom one would more regularly use text/messaging rather than voice to communicate with.
Great to respond but not top of mind to initiate
Only 19% of our panel report regularly using Apple Watch to initiate communication.
This confirms anecdotal evidence that Apple Watch is best when used as a response device.
While all users can respond with Apple Watch, it is only in situations where either an iPhone is not available or when one wants to use the Watch’s exclusive Tap, Heartbeat or Sketch capabilities that it makes sense to start a new communication with Apple Watch. Let’s look at the numbers on this topic.
Very high correlation
Cohort of those who state they do not use Watch to initiate communication regularly
those who state they use Watch to initiate communication regularly
When we contrast the usage of the innovative communication capabilities of Apple Watch, there are significant differences across cohorts of users.
For instance, those who use the exclusive Heartbeat or Sketch capabilities are the same users who also have a much higher probability to use Apple Watch regularly to initiate new communication.
The resulting takeaway is that the more one uses these Apple Watch-only capabilities, the more Apple Watch itself becomes “top-of-mind” as a primary communication device.
The next step in our analysis is to assess if there is a correlation between using these features and the number of other Apple Watch owners our panelists have in her/his circles.
Number of friends with Apple Watch drives usage
In the aggregate, those who don’t initiate communication regularly on Apple Watch have an average of less than 2.3 people with Apple Watch in their Friends list. This compares to over 3 people for those who do initiate regularly. As expected, there is a link between the two.
Another way to measure this is to analyze the usage levels for these features based on the actual number of Apple Watch owners in one’s Friends list. Below is a table depicting usage for the Sketch capability, which is the most often used of the 3 capabilities.
As you can see, we attain about 10% regular usage for 1 or less other Apple Watch owners, growing to about 20%-25% when one reaches 6 to 7 other owners and climbing to well over 30% with regular usage for the few who have more than 9 Apple Watch owner friends.
Not enough Apple Watch friends (yet)
The number of friends one has with Apple Watch is probably the best way for Wristly to assess market penetration for this new product. According to our data it is still very early days! Last week’s results are consistent with our June reported numbers with only 34% of Apple Watch owners having set 2 or more other Apple Watch owners in their “friends” list and 90% having 3 or less.
We might see an increase in these metrics post Holiday gift giving season — you might remember that close to 20% of Wristly owners stated that they would probably gift an Apple Watch to someone else and it’s been reported since then by many that Apple Watch is top of many Gift wish lists.
This will be one of the first topics of investigation in 2016. Until then, if you have Apple Watch and are not a member of our research program, please join at www.wristly.co, it’s free and very fast — a couple of minutes once a week, and in exchange you are first to receive the collected insights.
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