There’s a lot of promise behind the Apple Watch, but it looks like it won’t be quite the revolutionary wearable Apple had first hoped.
You might have noticed that despite all the headlines people haven’t really embraced smartwatches and other wearables like their makers had hoped. Whilst geeks like us rejoice at news of a new activity tracker or smart wearable on the scene the broader market just doesn’t get as excited about these devices, not yet at least.
There’s a strong chance that once Apple officially enters the scene in April, things will change for the better as more people are made aware of the smartwatch as a concept. But even the boffins in Cupertino are reining their hopes on the Apple Watch in a bit and it’s not going to be able to deliver quite what the initial concept promised.
It’s emerged that those familiar with the development of the Apple Watch suggest that it won’t emerge the feature rich wearable it was initially destined to be. Originally the Apple Watch was billed as a game-changer of sorts, namely with regards to its killer fitness tracking chops, which if the Health app on iOS is anything to go by, were robust to say the least.
The sensors intended to slot inside the Apple Watch were going to be able to read everything from a user’s heart rate and body temperature to the oxygen saturation of their blood, but for a number of reasons, the finished product will more likely resemble the current wearable crop less complex heart rate-tracking reading skills.
The changes and cuts in functionality expected in the market-ready version allegedly come from the trying development process the Apple Watch has endured. Sensors didn’t work correctly or were too inaccurate to offer reliable readings and for some of the proposed features, approval from health organisations like the FDA in the US and perhaps the NHS for us Brits would have been needed before billing the wearable as some medically-inclined wonder.
The time and money spent trying to give the Apple Watch its biometric powers led some employees to mark the project as a “black hole”, constantly draining resources. As such, the final version will be far more inline with other rival devices out there; tracking heart rate, running pace, elevation and so on, but we’re still expecting it to make the biggest splash when it lands.
Despite the criticisms internally and externally, Apple is still reportedly lining up between five and six million units for the watch’s initial launch and firms like ABI Research estimate that the company will sell a total of nearly 11.8 million units before the end of 2015. For comparison, the first-generation Android Wear crop have collectively sold somewhere in the region of 720,000 units combined.
It’s almost as if the Apple Watch’s arrival will raise the profile of wearables in everyone’s minds and potentially open up the market for better, more power competition going forward.
What features do you want to see from the Apple Watch? Let us know in the comments.
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