[threeseed]

Apple Watch has been a game changer in some respects.

I don't think anybody expected it to be as successful as it has been. And the feature set and their acquisitions e.g. Beddit gives a really interesting insight into where Apple is heading in the health sector.

[badestrand]

> Apple Watch has been a game changer in some respects. I don't think anybody expected it to be as successful as it has been.

It has disappointed, actually, according to the very article we are commenting on: "The company sold about 10 million units in the first year, a quarter of what Apple forecast"

[threeseed]

That was in the first year. Apple Watch has taken a while to get up to speed but is now doing really well.

You definitely can see it on more people's wrists than in the early days.

[badestrand]

Okay, thank you, I didn't know that.

[vitorgrs]

Apple Watch is the best-selling watch...

And the "Wearables, Home, and Accessories" revenue was 5.1 billion last quarter, which is bigger than iPad Revenue of 4.8 billion.

I actually think that Watch sales is a surprise on how well it is. Nobody expected it would be that good.

[thinkingemote]

Apple watch is for people who already have an iPhone. It's not a game changer for a wider market it's a peripheral. a successful peripheral.

[cmsj]

You're not wrong, but the context here is that iPhone sells over 200 million units a year. The chances of them having any other products which can even come close to matching that, is very very low.

[kccqzy]

The original iPod is a peripheral for people who already have Macs. Even later on, the iPod is a peripheral for people who already have either a Mac or a Windows PC.

My point is, peripherals can be successful and game-changing.

[davnicwil]

You're right, but I think the key here is that Mac and Windows support - essentially covering near 100% of the addressable market - made the iPod what it was.

The day watch becomes standalone and/or compatible with Android is the day it has a chance of becoming a true game changer. Until then I wouldn't even describe it as a peripheral, but just an accessory for an iPhone really.

[darkpuma]

The original iPod was a flop. cmdrtaco's infamous dismissal of it wasn't as wrong as people remember.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod#/media/File:Ipod_sales_pe...

[cmdrtaco]

Yeah!

[dillonmckay]

A decent portion of those sales are subsidized by health insurance.

[rorykoehler]

Apple Watch has some great features. Most of it's features are things I actively avoid though (ie notifications etc).

[ekianjo]

> I don't think anybody expected it to be as successful as it has been

How do you measure success? Because there is no way any comparison with the number of people who own an iPhone or any other kind of Apple device. Even in Japan where Apple has the lion share of the smartphone market I hardly see people with an Apple watch.

[stouset]

> Because there is no way any comparison with the number of people who own an iPhone

Apparently you measure success by "besting the single greatest consumer product success story in a generation". By this metric, virtually nothing would be considered a success.

Meanwhile, Apple became the biggest watchmaker in the world as of 2017. After only three years of producing watches, they unseated literally every other watchmaker in the world on revenue. That seems pretty damned successful to me.

[yoz-y]

Funny thing was that stories about how the Apple Watch is a flop continued well past the point when Apple lapped all of the watchmakers out there. Some bullshit stories just won't die.

[bryanrasmussen]

I guess there would have to be one success per generation.

[toasterlovin]

FWIW, I see Apple watches everywhere in the U.S. Even (especially?) on totally normal people.

[batiudrami]

Where in the US? I saw more Airpods during my 8 hour stopover in SF than I had seen in my entire life prior in Australia. It's a different world.

[rorykoehler]

Loads of people wear them in Australia.

[DEADBEEFC0FFEE]

Certainly in Sydney. I notice because I think they're over priced at AU$250, and I'm surprised how many school kids have them. I would lose them in a week.

[canuckintime]

> and I'm surprised how many school kids have them.

You might also be surprised how many are knockoffs [1] which are rapidly improving in quality [2]:

[1] https://www.macworld.com/article/3311456/airpods-knockoffs-t...

[2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml3wayRMK_s

[sundvor]

Heaps in Melbourne as well. Personally I find them daggy; if they're anything like the earphones included with the iPhone 3 they'd fall out of my ears if I just turned my head.

Samsung Buds OTOH stay in (and don't have the daggy bits hanging out).

[batiudrami]

I know (I'm in Sydney regularly). But I reckon 1/10 people I saw walking down the street had airpods in on a Tuesday arvo in SF.

[newshorts]

I think you mean “heaps”

[TheOtherHobbes]

In the UK they've sold well to C1s and some C2s, but not so much to the Bs and some As who are Apple's traditional market.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade

The amazing thing about the classic Apple designs was the way they managed to be textbook Veblen goods while also appearing to be gender and class neutral. They were aspirationally expensive, but not blingy.

That changed when gold and pink started to creep into the design vocabulary and the prices started moving up. The classic designs were more democratic. Not everyone could afford them, but they managed the neat trick of appearing to be visually inclusive rather than aggressively exclusive.

From that POV, Watch has been a design failure. It lacks the social status of the high-end I-have-money watch brands. It's neither expensive-but-neutral nor an outrageously self-indulgent statement product. The expensive straps and stainless steel variants made a pitch for the latter, but it was never convincing.

As a signifier it's visually bland and even slightly vulgar, which is why it hasn't had the same cultural impact. It's also why it works for C1/C2s but not for the ABs. Sales may be fine, but in its current form it's never going to be the covert high status product that Apple used to do so well.

[throwaway2048]

Apple products, while expensive in a general consumer goods sense are not anywhere near the pricing of a typical Veblen good, they have never been particularly status driven throughout their history in either computers or phones, and their sales violate the textbook definition of a Veblen good, sales dropped substantially when prices increased.

Apple is much more in line with a premium brand driven good like Nike, or Sony.

A true Veblen good phone would cost like $20000, be gold cased and nobody you know would own one.

[arethuza]

Vertu tried that approach with phones - didn't work out too well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertu

[Only ever saw them on sales at Heathrow Terminal 5 and Courchevel 1850]

[apetrovic]

Really? I live in Europe, where iPhone is hardly dominant, and I see Apple Watches everywhere.