If that were the case, Mr. Qiao would definitely be so angry that he would come back to life!

[[143111]]

Whether it is to help Apple sell more Apple Watches or to worry about the fact that Apple Watches are not performing as expected, a foreign research company recently said that Apple Watches should be compatible with Android in the future. The key point is to allow more Android applications to run on Apple Watches to promote the sales of Apple Watches. Is this really the case? Will Apple Watches really be compatible with Android in the future or what sufficient reasons does Apple have to be compatible with Android?

As we all know, since the release of Apple Watch, there have been different opinions on the market performance of Apple Watch (in terms of shipments), but the most conservative forecast, including the latest financial report analysis that includes Apple Watch sales, shows that Apple Watch's first quarter shipments have greatly surpassed Android smartwatches. In addition, judging from the number of Apple Watch applications announced in Apple's financial report, which is close to 8,000, it also leads the Android smartwatches. In other words, although Apple Watch's ecosystem is still being improved, it has far surpassed the Android camp. In this case, why does Apple Watch need to increase applications by being compatible with Android? It should be the other way around.

It should be noted that in the smartwatch market, Google's Android Wear and Android in smartphones are two completely independent ecosystems, that is, the applications for smartwatches are all developed independently. Under this reality, if Apple Watch is compatible with Android (actually it should be Android Wear), it will undoubtedly encourage developers to develop applications for Android Wear. Isn't this just helping the competition? More importantly, even Apple, the manufacturer that is best at application experience, has not been able to give users the same experience in the smartwatch ecosystem as in smartphones, let alone Android? It is business common sense that Apple should improve its own system experience instead of spending effort to be compatible with and improve the experience of Android applications.

In addition, from the actual situation of non-Android platforms and manufacturers compatible with Android in the smartphone industry, there are basically two situations. One is that manufacturers compatible with the Android system have been marginalized in the competition in the market, so they have to borrow the applications of the Android platform to help themselves. The most typical example is BlackBerry before and Microsoft after the release of Windows 10. From the market performance of BlackBerry after it became compatible with Android, it basically did not help, and even made its own ecosystem more marginalized on the basis of being marginalized. The other is to create an atypical Android ecosystem of its own, of which Amazon is a typical representative, but the actual effect is not ideal. Therefore, from the current leading position of Apple Watch in the smartwatch market, there is no need to be compatible with Android, and creating an atypical Android ecosystem alone is superfluous and even a thankless task.

Another point that cannot be ignored is that Apple released Apple Watch to indirectly promote iPhone sales. So the question is, even if Apple Watch is really compatible with Android in the future and has a good experience, this indirect promotion effect will inevitably be transferred to Android phones, which is obviously not worth the loss for Apple. After all, iPhone is still the core of Apple now and in the future. Why should the non-core Apple Watch damage the interests of the core? Smart Apple will never do this. Of course, there is another result of compatibility with Android, which is a poor experience (compared with the original Android). In this way, while damaging the sales of Apple Watch itself, it is also an indirect damage to the market effect of the best experience of the ecosystem established by Apple in the iPhone era. The so-called loss is not worth the gain.

Based on the above simple analysis, we believe that the suggestion of foreign research companies that Apple Watch should be compatible with Android in the future is nonsensical and lacks business logic, whether from the perspective of Apple Watch's current leading competitive position in the smartwatch market (there is no need for compatibility at all), or from the perspective of Apple's entire ecosystem strategy (using its own leading ecosystem to promote hardware sales) and the lessons learned from other manufacturers' compatibility with Android.