Apple Watch Ultra, probably the only new product to shine at Apple’s event this year, will go on sale offline. As the first product to receive the “Ultra” suffix, the Apple Watch Ultra, which focuses on outdoor and professional sports people, was recently unblocked from media reviews. Media teachers gave this “second most expensive” watch a good score: longer battery life, easier-to-use buttons, and better sound, which won applause from those who tried it.
However, the lack of more detailed outdoor data and navigation has also led the media to give the perception that it is “not yet ready to revolutionize Garmin”.
In the history of Apple, Apple Watch is one of the few “slow-burn” products.
Unlike the iPhone and iPad, it didn’t start out at the top and take the world by storm. Before its launch, the Apple Watch generated a lot of anticipation, but after its actual release, it had a lot of bad luck. Early sales were poor, and many of the products and design ideas proved to be unworkable. In the eight years since its birth, the Apple Watch has “felt its way across the river”.
But persistence still paid off. By focusing on its core functions, Apple Watch has finally emerged from a very strong growth curve in an era when “smart watches” are no longer a novelty. Apple’s wearables business has now surpassed the iPad and Mac as the company’s “third pillar.
With the newly released Apple Watch Ultra, we hope to use extreme outdoor sports as the entry point to once again impact the high-end and open the next chapter of the Apple Watch.
What has Apple Watch done wrong in the past eight years? What has it done right? Standing at the crossroads of destiny, what lessons have the new generation of Ultra Watches learned and what kind of future will it face?
01
Born with a silver spoon in its mouth
In the fall of 2014, Apple set its launch venue at the Flint Center near its corporate headquarters.
This venue has a very special meaning for Apple, as it was where Steve Jobs launched the first Macintosh computer in 1984 and the first iMac computer after he returned to Apple in the late 1990s.
So when Apple chose the Flint Center for the 30th anniversary of the Macintosh, everyone was expecting a “milestone” product.
All for the unveiling of the Apple Watch.
The Apple Watch demo site built by Apple back in the day｜Lavoz News
The launch of the first Apple Watch was probably the highest profile and most expensive launch in Apple’s history. Not only was it held at the Flint Center, a location of special significance; not only was the launch time moved up six months to prevent supply chain leaks; but the most extravagant part of the launch was that Apple set up a nearly perfect white tent next to the launch site to serve as a hands-on experience area for the Apple Watch.
Some Apple employees later recalled that Jony Ive, the chief design officer at the time, and the company’s management had a major dispute over the tent. Although I eventually got what he wanted and set up the tent at a cost of $25 million and 20 trees, I’ve also told people around him that it was the first time he felt “unsupported” within Apple, which became the starting point of the rift between I’ve and management.
This was the grand, extravagant, and not-so-harmonious birth of the Apple Watch.
The first Apple Watch Edition, with an 18-karat gold case｜Apple
From its inception, Apple Watch has been a product with “luxury” attributes. This is partly because watches, especially mechanical watches, have always been an important category of luxury; on the other hand, it also has to do with Jony Ive’s personal preference. Rumor has it that I’ve already wanted to leave Apple, but it was Cook’s management who agreed to his idea of making a “luxury gold watch”, so he chose to stay and work as chief design officer for five more years.
The “Gold Watch” Edition line, one of the three product lines of the original Apple Watch, takes the idea of luxury to the extreme. The Edition proved to be a complete failure, leaving behind a pile of unsold inventory, but it still injected the Apple Watch with the “luxury” gene.
Apple has since launched cases made of ceramic, titanium, and other expensive materials, which are 1-2 times more expensive than the basic watch. Apple also partnered with Hermes to launch a co-branded model, which is also expensive, but not as outrageous as the $120,000 gold watch.
According to market research firm IDC, the average Apple Watch sells for about $448, just a little more than the $399-$429 price of a basic aluminum watch. This means that not many users choose more expensive stainless steel, titanium watches, Hermes co-branded watches.
The failure of the luxury Apple Watch is not surprising. No matter what expensive materials Apple uses to build the case, it is after all an “electronic watch” that will be updated and upgraded every year. The upgrade of the case material drives up the price but does not bring incremental functionality and experience.
From this perspective, the Apple Watch Ultra is Apple’s first attempt to “sell features” on a high-end watch. “It supports higher levels of water and dust resistance. It supports higher levels of water and dust resistance, a depth gauge, a water thermometer, and a better screen and battery life. Apple has positioned the Ultra in the three extreme sports scenarios of climbing, adventure and diving, expecting outdoor players to be willing to pay a higher premium for the watch.
But the challenge for the Ultra remains: it’s just a watch, anyway.
02
Just a “watch”
Before the Apple Watch was born, the concept of a “smartwatch” was not new. Not only did it appear in the imagination of various science fiction works, but manufacturers also introduced some products, only they were not revolutionary. So people looked to Apple, hoping that it could recreate the iPhone miracle and “reinvent” the smartwatch.
The secret of the iPhone’s success is that it’s not just a phone, it’s a “computer” that you can hold in your hand, the next generation of computing devices. With iOS, the App Store and the mobile Internet, the iPhone became a true “smartphone”. Its features are no longer defined by Apple but are created by developers.
So in the first few years of the Apple Watch, it borrowed a lot from the iPhone, trying to be an “iPhone in your hand.
Apple Watch’s Early Doodle Feature｜Cult of Mac
For example, in the early days, Apple thought the Apple Watch should be a “communication device” and developed a set of exclusive communication features for it that allowed it to call up its friends list and send doodles and heartbeats with a single click. Apple also added cellular networking and walkie-talkie features to Apple Watch, so you can make and receive calls, texts, and voice messages on your watch even when your iPhone isn’t around.
Like the iPhone, the Apple Watch has its own App Store where you can run third-party apps, though most of the early watchOS apps were just “extensions” of the phone version: third-party apps that could display messages on the watch, push notifications, and perform simple functions like pulling up Alipay payment codes. They could also perform simple functions like retrieving Alipay payment codes. Later, there were some relatively independent watch apps, but there hasn’t been a really hot killer app yet.
Eight years later, most people realize that the Apple Watch is unlikely to be the “next iPhone”. Its screen is too small, and wearing it on your wrist limits the possibilities for interaction so much that you can’t play with it like a phone. And the size also limits the performance of the chip, heat dissipation, and the size of the battery, making it difficult to run “heavy-duty” applications.
Apple itself is in a dilemma. The current Apple Watch development kit doesn’t offer much, and developers are limited in what they can do. But if it’s too open, it could put too much pressure on the Watch’s hardware, increasing the likelihood of various failures and the potential for abuse of some features.
These underlying restrictions sealed the fate of the Apple Watch as a watch, a peripheral to the iPhone. So later on, Apple stopped emphasizing the concept of watchOS and slowed down the iteration of development kits, and developed more of its own features. The diving software on the Ultra was jointly developed by Apple and Oceanic, a professional diving equipment manufacturer, working closely together from the hardware and software design stage, which is very rare in Apple’s history.
Apple Watch Ultra features diving software developed by Apple and Oceanic｜Apple
But it’s also because Apple addressed this issue early on and didn’t let the Apple Watch go dark on the road to becoming an iPhone that the Apple Watch rose to success.
03
Sensors on the wrist
Apple focused on another core function of the Apple Watch, health.
The concept of monitoring health through a smartwatch is not the first of its kind. As early as around 2010, Fitbit, Jawbone and other manufacturers have made smart bracelets with built-in sensors to help users monitor their own movement. 2014 summer, Xiaomi launched the first generation of Xiaomi bracelet, which can also achieve sports, sleep monitoring.
But Apple still has its own ideas. 2013, Apple in the new release of the iPhone 5s equipped with an M7 co-processor. This processor is designed to be very similar to the Apple Watch chip and can monitor user activity, calculate how many steps you take each day, and consume so little power that it barely affects the phone’s battery life.
What the M7 coprocessor does is not different from the smartband, but because it’s built into the iPhone, it scales up from 100,000 for the smart band to a billion for the iPhone.
Soon, “step counting” became a standard feature of smartphones, which also gave birth to applications such as WeChat Sports and Ant Forest, socializing and gratifying sports data. As early as before the phone can count steps, it was popular to say “walk 10,000 steps a day to stay healthy”, but few ordinary people will buy a bracelet to monitor. It was only after cell phones became available that “pedometry” entered the era of universal popularity.
In 2013, Apple released the M7 coprocessor, giving the iPhone a “step counting” function｜Apple
Based on the iPhone’s “pedometer” function, Apple Watch deepens and refines the exercise record: it can not only record your steps, calories burned, exercise time, and standing time, but also record detailed exercise performance for different types of exercise. And this complex exercise data is translated into daily “three-loop” goals, where the watch encourages you to stand every hour, move for 30 minutes a day, and burn the calories you set as your goal.
On the surface, counting your steps on your iPhone and recording your workouts on your Apple Watch seem like two duplicate functions. But in reality, it’s the iPhone’s “pedometer” that has led many users to embrace the idea of “monitoring exercise. When they get the idea to quantify and record their movement in more detail, the Apple Watch is the perfect choice to “take it a step further”.
With the launch of iOS 16 this year, Apple has also introduced the “Sports Ring” feature for iPhone users. Apple will take the steps recorded on the iPhone and turn them into calorie goals, encouraging users to exercise more and reach their goals. Of course, this could eventually entice them to buy an Apple Watch and unlock richer, more detailed exercise logging features.
On iOS 16, Apple married the iPhone’s “pedometer” feature with the Apple Watch’s “sports ring” concept.｜Apple
The Apple Watch isn’t a “next-generation computing device,” it’s just a watch. But this watch is also a “health sensor” on your wrist that monitors your exercise, heart rate, temperature, and sleep ……
And it really works: Some health insurance companies in the United States give away free Apple Watches to their customers to encourage them to exercise more and stay healthy. A follow-up survey showed that customers who were given an Apple Watch increased their overall exercise by 51 percent compared to the previous level.
By starting with a segmented scenario, Apple has uncovered a $10 billion health market.
04
Ultra’s “high-end mission”
Looking back at the history of the Apple Watch, the journey has been full of ups and downs.
It didn’t become the “next generation computing platform”, and it couldn’t even work independently of the iPhone. Most people today prefer to think of the Apple Watch as an extension of the iPhone, a supplement to the iPhone’s functionality, and part of the iPhone ecosystem.
But even if it is only a part of the iPhone, Apple Watch has proved that the market is bigger than expected.
Since 2017, Apple Watch’s “wearables” business has been the strongest growing segment of Apple’s business line. For four consecutive years, sales have grown at a compound rate of more than 30 percent. It was only in the past year that sales growth began to slow due to a lack of substantial feature upgrades to AirPods and Apple Watch. In the most recent quarter, there was a year-over-year decline.
Today, the Apple Watch is Apple’s most important “second growth curve” and is responsible for supporting revenue.
So at this September event, Apple unveiled the new AirPods Pro and the Apple Watch Ultra, which represent the true high-end impact of the Apple Watch.
Some believe that the Apple Watch Ultra is aimed at professional outdoor equipment manufacturers, represented by Garmin. The two will certainly compete, but the real power of the Apple Watch lies in how it can “convert” the billions of iPhone users, pushing them out of their homes to participate in outdoor sports and make a bigger cake.
Just like 8 years ago, when Apple Watch was born, Fitbit was already in the business of sports bracelets, but no one could have imagined that the market could grow to a scale of $10 billion.
If you ask what experience and lessons the Apple Watch has left for the industry, it proves that a product must be based on real needs in order to be established. Even Apple doesn’t have the ability to turn a product into gold on a whim. You have to be patient and find that need through trial and error.
The Apple Watch Ultra is Apple’s “concession” to its previous extravagant attempts and the next chapter in its ongoing experimentation.
