Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables

I&#x27;m pretty skeptical that Apple has a decade-long lead on any of the other big players in the market. Any innovations that one company can make can be more quickly adopted than new innovations occur and there&#x27;s nothing as far as software goes that Apple is uniquely positioned to create. The other factors mentioned such as silicon tech being years ahead of the competition is one that is hardly a factor for the smart watch category.<p>On the other hand this is always the case and Apple&#x27;s been the best at creating a general consumer wearable that appeals to the masses. Its integration into the apple ecosystem is a big selling point and that&#x27;s probably the biggest factor that is basically impossible for competitors to replicate.<p>On a tangential note, I&#x27;d like to take a moment to recognize the amount of work that Apple has put into its accessibility features. Assistive Touch on the apple watch will probably serve a remarkably small portion of the user base and perhaps costs more to develop than the return they&#x27;ll ever see on it. Still, year after year Apple keeps advancing accessibility features in all of its products. This is definitely an area where big tech companies like Apple and Microsoft excel at.

Pebble IMO was and still is the best wearable watch. I don’t think anything worked better largely due to the long battery life and generally the e-ink design. Had they added different wrist bands with smart tech in it, it would have gone even further.<p>I don’t really think apple has a decade lead, what they do have is minimal innovation they’re competing with. AND more importantly, a brand and ecosystem. That being said if Samsung came out with a decent watch similar to pebble and bundled it with their phones I think they’d be outselling Apple.

Don&#x27;t understand why this is upvoted. The math used to get to 10+ years assumes competitors address each element of the lead one-by-one:<p>&gt; Custom silicon &#x2F; technology &#x2F; sensors (a four to five-year lead over the competition, and that is being generous to the competition)<p>&gt; Design-led product development processes that emphasizes the user experience (adds three years to Apple’s lead)<p>&gt; A broader ecosystem build-out in terms of a suite of wearables and services (adds two years to Apple’s lead)<p>Why would competitors wait to start on emphasizing user experience and broader suite of wearables until after they create &quot;custom silicon&quot; (whatever that means)? And the claim that user experience is superior for an Apple itself is unsubstantiated. As an Android&#x2F;Windows person, I would most likely have a better experience with an Android-based wearable than an Apple-based wearable because of the integration. If the claim is that Apple has a lead against competitors for owners of Apple products, why is that interesting enough to write a blog post? I bet Apple has a lead in Lightning to 3.5mm headphone dongles too.

The article seems to be saying that Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables over a list of companies that don&#x27;t even make wearables. That is a clever trick for giving the article a bold title, but the result is a fairly uninteresting and uninformative Apple jerk-off piece. It is akin to saying &quot;Quaker Oats has a 150-year lead in edibles&quot; where Apple doesn&#x27;t even make food.

I know it&#x27;s not quite the same and is a lot more complicated, but...<p>What was Microsoft (PocketPC) and Palm&#x27;s lead in hand held computing back in the days, right before Apple shit over everything they did in one announcement?<p>Wearable as currently imagined kind of suck. Making them better while keeping the same concept is just gonna make something that sucks faster&#x2F;lighter. Someone needs to come in and take the world by storm with something we didn&#x27;t think of yet. Maybe that will STILL be Apple, but it could be someone else.

I think people underestimate how big of a factor weight is going to be when it comes to face wearables. Apple’s lead in terms of performance&#x2F;watt is so massive at this point, they’re going to have a few years where no other AR solution can even compete.

Apple’s lead seems to be more in tangential things that are very hard to replicate: Apple Pay, supporting the highly popular iMessage, etc. These can never work with any other device.<p>There are definite flaws in the device. I find buttons unnecessarily hard to tap for instance (they should offer more vertical space), and the face is so sensitive that it routinely triggers unwanted actions. It is really annoying to start something I <i>want</i> (like a timer) and notice some time later that I somehow accidentally <i>stopped</i> the timer by hitting my watch on something.<p>As far as 3rd parties, I have seen a general trend of apps gradually withdrawing their support for watchOS. There just aren’t that many useful things to do on a small surface. For apps suited to this (timers, reminders, etc.) it is fine.

I didn&#x27;t think I would like the Apple Watch as much as I do. I swear, add a camera, and I&#x27;ll leave my phone at home.<p>I know, it&#x27;s not a mobile browser, not really much as a mobile messaging device — but that&#x27;s fine. One one hand, I&#x27;m not your stereotypical phone user that is always engrossed in the <i>black mirror</i> but furthermore, the Apple Watch means I am even less inclined.

Around 10 years ago I wrote a Linux driver for the OCZ Nia, a super cheap EMG device. The Nia was actually a $10k medical device for paralyzed people to control computers with their face and tongue repurposed as a gaming input and sold for $120.<p>While I&#x27;m certain the technology has advanced, what surprises me most is how basic these finger reading devices seem. They&#x27;re basically some electrodes on your skin near major nerve centers and a little bit of signal processing, like barely any signal processing.<p>It&#x27;s about time this technology entered the mainstream. I was waiting for VR with occular&#x2F;vagus nerve sensing for depth of field emulation but I guess hand sensors are the next best thing.

I strongly disagree.<p>Apple is selling a ton of watches because the brand is currently so strong that it&#x27;s a no brainer for most people.<p>Also, the product is actually not bad.<p>But, I don&#x27;t find it attractive, I think the rectangular design was an early mistake that will hinder their design for a long time.<p>The software look good mostly because Google did a really poor job when porting Android to this form factor.<p>This is not the end of the story, and it won&#x27;t need 10 years for competitors to catch up.

I find the article’s mention of the “static smart speaker mirage” unconvincing. I use Amazon Echo at home and have found its voice recognition and capabilities vastly superior to those of Siri. In my opinion it’s fair to say this is an area where Apple is flat out losing to the competition. I too had assumed the watch or phone would provide all that functionality, but it appears I was mistaken.<p>I think the major lead Apple has in wearables has to do with ecosystem. I wear and Apple Watch because I want to listen to Apple Music while running. Doing so is clumsy with any other device.

Aside from some niche health-focused areas, the only value prop that wearables currently have to most people is in tech ecosystem integration. This just so happens to be an area where apple is head and shoulders above their competition.

Pertinent point, IMO:<p>&gt; Google I&#x2F;O 2021. At its 2021 developers conference, Google showed signs of finally taking wrist wearables seriously by ditching Wear OS and partnering with Samsung on a new OS. While it is fair to be skeptical that the effort will end up being successful, the announcement was a marked change from prior Google I&#x2F;Os when wearables were all but ignored. Diving a bit deeper into Google’s announcement, it’s easy to see how far behind Google truly is in wearables.<p>Google completely dropped the ball on Wear OS. To add to this, Qualcomm’s wearable SoCs have also been lagging. Samsung is generally good at keeping pace with hardware, but has been hobbled by Tizen and a weak ecosystem. These things cannot change overnight, and Google’s stewardship track record is something that doesn’t improve drastically, regardless of any announcements it makes.<p>For wearables as a whole, I don’t believe Apple has a decade-long lead though. We’ll have to wait and practically see what it does for AR wearables before concluding on a number.

And yet it can&#x27;t make a smartwatch with a power consumption less of a freaking nuclear submarine. Wearable balttery should be counted in weaks, not fractions of a second.

That is in general a ridiculous claim to make when talking about consumer technology. No company has a decade-long lead in anything. If there is sufficient economic motivation competitors will always catch up in a year or two. It happened for smartphones, tablets, TVs, speakers, headphones, cameras, voice assistants and just about everything else.<p>In case of the watch specifically I actually think there <i>isn&#x27;t</i> enough motivation to innovate considering the space hasn&#x27;t blown up like everyone expected. If you take headphones out of the picture wearables as a whole is still a relatively niche device category.

Google put a ton of R&amp;D effort into gesture sensing with short range radar (Soli) but it doesn&#x27;t seem to have gone much of anywhere as yet. I don&#x27;t think this type of interface is as important as the author claims.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;atap.google.com&#x2F;soli&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;atap.google.com&#x2F;soli&#x2F;</a>

Nokia had a decade-long lead in mobile phones.

Apple wearables are terrible, sorry. What use is a watch that I have to reload every night and can&#x27;t be used decently on it&#x27;s own?<p>Anyone who has worn a decent, say, polar or garmin, sports watch for more than a day will be amazed and terrified to discover how bad apple wearables are. A good touchscreen is all they have to offer.

I’m not convinced the wearable market has been cracked at all.<p>I feel when it finally is we’ll roll our eyes at the current day smartphone concept.

I&#x27;m wondering if Apple tried selling it&#x27;s current line of smartwatches a decade from now whether they would be competitive or just retro.

I&#x27;d hesitate to put a time estimate like that on their lead in anything. They&#x27;ve had a &quot;decade-long&quot; lead on a lot of things for over a decade. The rest of the market (unfortunately) acts like it&#x27;s decided not to actually compete directly with them <i>at all</i>, and to chase other segments instead, putting out products that might look kind-of similar but aren&#x27;t really serious alternatives to most people considering the Apple version of whatever-it-is.

I want a watch that stands alone.

I&#x27;ve seen kickstarter projects with better wearables.

Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables for the Apple ecosystem.

What a joke. Google, Facebook and Microsoft have face wearables in the market already. In Google&#x27;s case, they&#x27;ve had enough time to do a full, release and kill cycle. And the Quest runs Android.<p>How is that an Apple lead?

Apple needs a little competition. I expected the Watch to advance much quicker.<p>6 years ago I wrote this blog saying everyone would be wearing a smart watch within a decade. My reasons were “health and safety“<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;h4labs.wordpress.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;28&#x2F;in-the-future-everyone-will-wear-a-smartwatch&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;h4labs.wordpress.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;28&#x2F;in-the-future-everyo...</a><p>“ There has been much discussion on the need for smart watches like the Apple Watch. People have a hard time believing that a large market exists. I can’t say with certainty that you’ll be wearing an Apple Watch a decade from now but you’ll definitely be wearing a smart watch from Apple, Google, or some new kid on the block.”