The future of Apple is the Apple watch

SAN FRANCISCO – The iPhone is the leading manufacturer of Apple, but analysts and the press can not help but speculate on the next big news of the company, which represents a trillion of dollars. Is it a car? Maybe a pair of smart computer glasses?

But the future of Apple is already on the market and it sells about 18 million units per year, according to estimates. You may already have one on your wrist. This is the Apple Watch, the portable computing device that the company launched in 2015.

It's nowhere more clear last week at the company's annual launch on its Apple Park campus. Yes, Apple has revealed new iPhones. But he spent about an hour on the new Apple Watch, which provoked a much stronger reaction from the 1,000 reporters and analysts participating in the launch than any iPhone.

Apple's Apple Series 4, as Apple calls the new models, represents the first new update of its industrial design since its launch in 2014. Thinner, they have a larger screen and improved speakers and microphones. (At a starting price of $ 399, they are also slightly more expensive than previous models, it should be noted.)

They also come with a ton of new watch faces, including moving images of fire and water filmed with a high speed camera, as well as some new looks for the operating system. There are many big changes.

The new watches make the old Apple watches obsolete. Basically, Apple Watch has just returned, a clear sign of Apple's technical ambitions, while the iPhone is experiencing diminishing returns, each model is a step progressively compared to previous.

Which is to say that Apple Watch has really taken a turn. "This will be a more tipping point in the understanding and adoption of the product," said Apple's chief designer, Jony Ive, at the Washington Post.

The response from customers seems to be strong. On Friday, the first day you could pre-order the new devices, Apple Watch pre-orders were delivered in October, while several new iPhone XS models were available soon after launch or shortly thereafter.

Yes, the smartwatch market is still much smaller than that of smartphones. According to IDC, a market research firm, will market this year 46 million smartwatches, a tiny fraction of the 1.5 billion smartphones that will end up in the hands of buyers.

But that's not how Apple looks at the Apple Watch.

The Apple Watch attacks users who have never needed it before

On Wednesday, the new features and new design of Apple Watch were revealed by Apple's chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, often described as the right-hand man of CEO Tim Cook.

Unlike other Apple presenters, it's not an engineer or a marketer. It is a businessman who specializes in manufacturing and shipping millions of complex computers in stores.

He is also responsible for the booming health department of Apple. And Wednesday's presentation was all about how Apple Watch can help a wearer live a healthier life.

But the new features of the device are not limited to helping you to follow a workout or to remind you to take a second to breathe deeply, like the current models. Apple goes further by actually detecting something that is not right before you know it.

For example, Apple Watch now has a fall detection. Many aging seniors wear bracelets that can call 911 or a loved one when they take a bad fall and can not get up, like those announced by Life Alert. Now the Apple Watch can do it too.

It remains to be seen if older people will adopt the iPhone, which is still required to use an Apple Watch, or if they will love the idea of ​​regularly charging an Apple Watch, which they do not have to do. monitoring. But there is now a reason for older people to get an Apple Watch that is not related to workouts or to receive notifications from iPhone apps – features that younger users may like, but that could alienate an older generation and less aware.

The other new feature is an integrated ECG reader, or stallion on which doctors rely to detect heart problems. Apple is very careful – probably because of regulatory pressure – that the new Apple Watch ECG scanner can not tell a user that he wants to see a doctor that he is not diagnosing a problem, but that: early warning system.

This means that the Apple Watch does not really concern the smartwatch space in full swing, but rather some of the $ 3.3 trillion spent annually in health care, one of the few markets in the world to be validated by Apple and its valuation of one trillion dollars. .

Apple faces a new marketing challenge

This does not mean that Apple Watch does not face problems.

One of them was clear on Williams' line of theater: "People in general do not like medical things. It makes you want to take an ECG, "he said, referring to a new cardiac animation.

He is right: people do not want to think about death or sickness.

As Business Insider pointed out, a venture capitalist who attended the launch: If you look at Apple's commercials for Apple Watch, they all present young people who have fun. But if the Apple Watch is to become Apple's reference product, it will be used by many groups and demographic groups, including the disabled, which could tarnish the beautiful image of fashion Apple.

In addition, health is a highly regulated industry, which poses potential problems for a company that sometimes advertises its marketing. I'm not sure that the FDA likes "magic" and "best" health devices in the main speeches.

Yet, with regard to Apple's technological ambitions, it's clear that the Apple Watch is where it's going. It is there that Apple makes the most improvements in miniaturization, materials, new types of sensors, new types of experiments and new types of customers.

The Apple Watch represents the future of Apple as a technology company.