Apple Watch: first version unlikely to be measure of success, as future of smartwatches is on the line

The company has sold out of Watches, and everyone’s talking about wearables — but that probably doesn’t mean much yet

A solution in search of a problem: shoppers queue in Hong Kong to test the Apple Watch, which does little that isn’t already available (AFP/Getty)

The Watches are sold out. The queues are invisible, just as Apple wanted. And everyone’s talking about whether wearables are the future. But Apple’s newest product won’t be made in a week— the real judge of whether their first new product since the iPad is a success is whether it matters years down the line.

Apple’s products often look like immediate successes, in hindsight. But they often aren’t. The iPad was greeted with shouting about how it was just a big iPhone; the iPhone didn’t even have apps when it was released; Apple TV is only just starting to make sense for the company, more than seven years after it was launched.

The company doesn’t traditionally launch new product categories — there were smartphones, tablets, and MP3 players before Apple came along — but, again, it often looks that way in retrospect. As it did with those other devices, Apple will be looking to define and control the new smartwatch category to the extent that it becomes almost synonymous with it.

As such, the estimates of sales — over 3 million ahead of the launch, according to some analysts — are useful but not definitive. The numbers that buy the second iteration of the Apple Watch, and those that follow it, will be more so.

Waiting and seeing could be the best option for customers, too. Apple tends to get things very right — but it tends to get them even more right on the second go, after the first shows what could be improved. Apple Watch 2 (or whatever the company chooses to call it) will likely be a refined and updated version of the product.

Apple is looking to make a previously weird and exciting device category — smartwatches, and wearables in general — into something high-end but not alienating. The sales figures and the sold out pre-orders show that it has likely done the first half of that job by convincing the early adopters that they should buy it, but now Apple has to hope that when the hype dies down the demand will still be there, and that watches will still be on people’s wrists.