Apple Watch is already a success: Negative opinions are unnecessary

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Recently, the Apple Watch, which was once the focus of everyone's attention, has been pushed to the forefront of public opinion: American financial media CNBC reported that Apple Watch has been unsalable and in backlog; third-party market research company Slice estimated that Apple Watch's annual sales may not reach the optimistic expectations of some analysts; second-hand trading platform NextWorth announced that it will launch an Apple Watch recycling service. As long as there are no problems with the software and hardware quality, users can sell their Apple Watch to NextWorth at a 50% discount, but the gold version of Apple Watch is not included in this repurchase service.

Many opinions have been pessimistic about Apple Watch, and some people even think that Apple Watch is a failed product. So, has Apple Watch really failed? What exactly is it planning?

Apple Watch completes the leap from 0 to 1

According to market research firm Global Equities Research, Apple Watch has received 7 million orders and shipped 2.5 million units since it went on sale on April 10. Apple is expected to ship about 5 million units by the end of this quarter.

In today's smart wearable industry, whether it is watches, bracelets or other types of wearable devices, this is already an unrivaled sales figure. The reason why many people today think that the Apple Watch product itself and its market performance have not met expectations is mainly because they do not look at this product from the perspective of the smart wearable industry, but compare it with mobile phones and PC products whose technology has entered the middle-aged and elderly stage, which is not "fair" to the smart wearable industry.

From the perspective of industrial development, the smart wearable industry can be said to be an industry in its infancy. Since the explosion of Google Glass, the technical carriers of its chips, processors, communication transmission, interaction, cloud, display, battery life, charging, sensors and other products have not been completed, and even many industrial chain technologies have not yet found their development direction. However, mobile phones are an industry that has entered middle age, and PCs are more like an industry that has entered old age. Now, it is obviously inappropriate to "compare" an industry in its infancy with an industry in its middle age or old age.

Moreover, the development of any industry, from emergence to growth and maturity, requires a development cycle, whether from the perspective of products or the industrial chain. Take Apple's own iPhone as an example. It was the iPhone 4 that was truly recognized, accepted and exploded by the public. So how long did it take for the iPhone to change the history of mobile phones?

In 2004, Apple assembled more than 1,000 internal employees to form an iPhone R&D team and started a highly confidential project. The first generation of iPhone was not officially released in the United States until 6 p.m. on June 29, 2007. The first generation of iPhone, which Jobs spent three years to build, had a rear camera with only 2 million pixels, did not support 3G networks, let alone 4G, and did not support copy and paste in operation; even at the time, it caused market controversy because of its battery design that could not be disassembled. In the following months, the market sales performance of the product did not meet expectations. In order to promote iPhone sales, Jobs made the first price cut in the history of iPhone development. Afterwards, with the continuous improvement of the industrial chain and Apple's own continuous optimization of the software and hardware aspects of the disruptive product iPhone, it was not until June 7, 2010 that the iPhone 4 released by Apple truly brought the smartphone industry into a mature and stable stage of "intelligence".

Based on this comparison, I think the data from market research company Global Equities Research may be more valuable for reference. Its comparison of Apple Watch with iPod, iPhone, and iPad shows that: after the launch of iPod, the total sales in the first quarter were only 125,000 units; the sales of iPhone in the first quarter were 1.1 million units; the sales of iPad in the first quarter were 3.3 million units; and the sales of Apple Watch in the first quarter are expected to reach about 5 million units. Therefore, it can be said that Apple Watch is the most successful "new category product" in the history of Apple.

In an industry where the industrial chain has not yet matured, Apple Watch has achieved a leap from 0 to 1. Its performance in the market, whether compared with products in the same industry or with the previous iPhone and iPad, has obviously achieved great success in terms of sales data alone. Moreover, I believe that we will soon see the second and third generations of Apple Watch. With Apple's continuous optimization of its products and the continuous maturity of the industrial chain, it will inevitably perform better than the iPhone and bring greater success than the iPhone.

Apple Watch wins double crown in smart wearables

According to a latest report by market research firm Think Big Analytics, Apple Watch sales in the first two weeks are likely to reach 3 million, of which 1.8 million are sports editions, 1.2 million are stainless steel editions, and 40,000 are 18K gold custom editions. Carl Howe, an analyst at ThinkBig Analytics, believes that these 3 million sales will bring in nearly $2 billion in revenue. The most critical data is that the gross profit margin of Apple Watch is as high as 60%, making it the most profitable product of Apple to date.

At present, it is too early for us to make a conclusion on whether the Apple Watch created by Cook can finally fulfill the expectations of those capitalists on Wall Street. But judging from the current market sales performance, Apple Watch has obviously won the double crown in the field of smart wearables. On the one hand, its sales volume exceeds the total sales of smart watches of other brands so far; on the other hand, it has earned N times the total profit of all other brands in the smart wearable industry so far. With so many sales and so much money, it is not easy to say that Apple Watch will fail.

Attract multiple parties to join in the joint cultivation of the market

At present, the entire smart wearable industry is facing an embarrassing reality, and consumers' cognition of the industry and products is in a vague state. One of the values ​​that cannot be ignored with the emergence of Apple Watch is that it has brought confidence and encouragement to the entire industry. On the one hand, it has accelerated the massive entry of enterprises in the fields of Internet and IT; on the other hand, it has triggered the entry of Swiss watch companies; in addition, it has attracted a large number of makers to enter. These three aspects will play a very critical role in the popularization of consumer cognition in the smart wearable industry. As far as the watch industry is concerned, ElmarMock, one of the founders of Swatch, said that Apple Watch may lead the Swiss watch industry into the "Ice Age". Whether it is admitted or not, the Swiss watch industry, whether from Omega, Montblanc, Frederique Constant, Mondaine, Movado, or Swatch, is following Apple Watch with its own practical actions to fight together.

Smart wearable products come in a variety of forms. For example, wearable devices for the human body range from glasses, bracelets, watches, clothes, shoes to pendants. No matter what form is chosen as the carrier, the most direct and powerful way is to let the existing brands of this industry join this camp to transform themselves. If the market of the smart wearable industry is not cultivated, the industrial chain is not mature, and consumer awareness is not popularized, selling 1 million more or 1 million less Apple Watches will not mean much to Cook.

Apple Watch: The control center for the Internet of Things era

As Apple Watch landed in Switzerland, Cook's ambitions for Apple Watch have gradually emerged. In fact, Cook is not concerned about the sales volume of Apple Watch, but how to use it to build a control system in the Internet of Things era and explore the possibility of using smart watches as the control center of the Internet of Things. From the perspective of the entire development stage of the Internet, from the initial Internet era with PC as the carrier to today's mobile Internet era with smartphones as the carrier, the next step will inevitably evolve into the Internet of Things era with smart wearables as the carrier.

As the head of a global technology giant, Cook must make plans for this industrial evolution process in advance. If the system built by Jobs based on the iPhone has become the control center of the mobile Internet, then the watchOS system built by Cook based on smart watches is to lay out the control center of the Internet of Things. Whether it is smart home, smart banking or mobile medical care, including the recent news that BMW will cooperate with Apple in the automotive field, the biggest possibility is to explore how to achieve intelligent control of cars through Apple Watch. Even at the 2015 Apple Developer Conference not long ago, Cook announced the official launch of watchOS, an independent system platform based on Apple Watch, and opened this system to developers to jointly explore applications based on Apple Watch. All of this is pointing to a common direction, that is, how to make Apple Watch the control center of the Internet of Things era.