It’s always risky to make predictions about Apple, particularly when they are silly. The company plays a long game and isn’t known for panicked releases of me-too products.
Time is ticking for Apple to announce an iWatch, say analysts is a good example of a silly prediction about Apple’s future products and something that’s quite rightly criticised by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber.
As I’ve pointed out before, the watch market is tiny compared to the smartphone with the entire global wristwatch industry’s sales making up only one-seventh of Apple’s iPhone sales.
Part of the problem with stories like CNBC’s is the tech media’s focus on consumer goods, particularly in the internet of things and wearable technology markets.
Analysts like those quoted in CNBC’s story fall for this fallacy and overlook that the IoT market profits are going to come from the backend, B2B applications of the technologies.
With Apple we’re already seeing this with iBeacon being deployed in sports stadiums and shopping centres – Apple’s recent partnership with United Airlines to provide inflight entertainment is another step towards locking up business deals.
There’s no doubt those business deals will flow into the consumer market and an iWatch may well be part of Apple’s longer plan to lock customers into their products.
However claiming Apple have 60 days to launch an iWatch is plain silly, particularly when you have a company with a track record of not being panicked into launching me-too products and playing the long game.