Apple's reductive thinking, patience and need centric approach should make their wearable device entirely different to Samsung's rapidly produced, defensive, technology driven Smartwatch.
Samsung and virtually every other consumer electronics company make products that do specific things. Apple make devices that carve out a role in your life, an approach from "Line-filling" to "Life-filling". It's this shift from product to role that makes Apple so successful.
If it's made, Apple's iWatch should be a new era in how people operate in a environment where information becomes an ambient layer around us. It would become our connection to the digital world, in a socially acceptable form factor.
There is no reason Apple should be the only ones to do this, but attempts from Samsung and Pebble show a lack of understanding of the role this device needs to fill & Google seems to misunderstand people.
One of the many mockups so far (Amazing concept photo from: Yrving Doveralba | www.yrving.com )
Samsung sales continue to be lackluster, Google struggles with Google Glasses, Apple's need to demonstrate innovation continues to grow after it's purchase of Beats and the world of Consumer Electronics is starting to get tougher by the day.
Electronic goods are getting better, cheaper, larger and they last longer. In order to sell more we either need to demand more from items ( which we are not) or invent new things. What all electronics companies now need is a new category, much like the tablet, but better still, one that doesn't cannibalize existing sales.
This is what I think Apple will launch in 2014. Unlike others online who make prototypes and who show what it looks like, I will explain what I think it will do & show how this can create a new category to explode, not a new device to gather niche sales.
Line filling in electronics.
Personal devices are following the CPG strategy of "line filling", creating ever more devices that satisfy ever more niche needs, all in the hope of incremental category sales and grabbing share from competitors, while hoping to not cannibalize the sales of fairly similar products.
Samsung, Sony, Google offer a bewildering array of products, it's like a desperate friend willing to change yet another aspect of their personality, in the hope of you liking them..... "but this phone comes in red".
Apple have always taken the opposite view, in 2006 Nokia launched 73 phones with over 150 variants , Apple launched one with three slight variants. They didn't suffer for it.
Samsung are the eager beavers of the electronics world, if someone, somewhere, did something in a lab, and it looks vaguely marketable, it will be wisked onto the stage at CES in the hope of skimming another customer, getting PR, or frustrating a rival Japanese company.
Curved screens or 3D is a product of the attitude of "it can be done" or "we did this first" , not "people want this". I'm not a lover of Apple by any means, my positive attitude is only relative and relative to the disdain I feel for every electronics company in the world that fails to come close to being customer and need centric. From the chaotic menus of our Cable TV providers, to the 34 buttons on my Microwave, to the ugly vacuum cleaners, it's only when Apple or Dyson come along do we realize how poor the rest have been, and what marvels can be made.
In this need to get ahead, this hurry to innovate Samsung have done something dangerous, they've created a smart-watch that does what a phone does, but removed a few functions.
This subtractive approach makes the phone optimized for a few purposes, makes it cheap but also makes it entirely pointless.
There is nothing you can now do with a Samsung watch that you could't do before. The increase in functionality is only found in a small number of fairly irrelevant things you can now do slightly more easily or more quickly.
Let's also consider the device ecosystem, increasingly we live at a time of a portfolio of devices, we tend to either fit into an Android personal device ecosystem or an Apple system. If you own a Laptop, A Galaxy Smartphone, A Galaxy Tablet, what is the incremental benefit of the Smart Watch?.
Samsung line fills, Apple grows new categories.
Apple demonstrates their wisdom in an additive approach.
- They create entire new product categories we never knew we wanted.
- They wait a painfully long time and until they think the world is ready for a technology. They wait for the infrastructure required to make the most of the technology to become common, they wait for people to be ready to adopt such a thing.
- They do things that allow us to do new things, things we didn't think were possible.
- This all takes incredible self control and confidence.
- They don't always get it right. They are way too late with large screen smartphones for one.
- They create devices that fulfill a role, and a role in respect to other things in your world of appliances.
It is this additive approach that will make the Smartphone a key piece of your personal device ecosystem, something that makes the system greater than the sum of it's parts, and not just a gimmick.
Introducing the iWatch.
The true functional benefits come from how the device can interact with other devices around it.
While the risk with Samsung is that their products overlap, you can get by without some, Apple can go for the opposite, with their highly involved, invested and wealthy userbase, Apple can design a product that barely works alone, but embellishes every other Apple product you own.
The iWatch will bring new inputs from the wrist to allow entirely new use cases, the iWatch won't be your smartwatch, it will be the way that your body interfaces with the digital world.
Firstly it will be able to do this by recording more about your surroundings that any other device, unlike an iPhone with accelerometers and GPS, the Smartwatch will be constantly recording many more dimensions to our context.
The Inputs.
It should feature a variety of sensors like :
- GPS.
- Heart beat monitor.
- Stress levels monitor.
- Blood oxygen level.
- Body temperature.
- Outside temperature.
- Humidity.
- Skin moisture levels.
- Accelerometers.
By measuring all this constantly the iWatch builds up a picture of how you are behaving, how you are feeling, what you are doing and where you are. You watch becomes the ultimate quantified self device offering you an accurate display of every part of your life.
- I think it will feature TouchID. Touch ID is Apple’s route into secure mobile payment. The mobile payments market is projected to be worth $500bn per year without Apples involvement by 2015, can you imagine how this market would increase if driven by Apple? Can you imagine how much the company with 950 million credits card on file could make by offering fraud protection? Make no mistake TouchID is a 100% play for mobile wallets.
- It could even contain muscle sensors to allow you to control interfaces rather like this technology from Thalmic Labs.
https://www.thalmic.com/en/myo/ .
The Outputs
The real benefits come from how the device can interact with those devices around it.
- I think it will feature NFC to allow rapid, secure, two way data to pass, while predicting NFC for Apple is a fools game, the reality is that NFC will be the only technology with reasonable adoption in retail in the near future.
- I think it will feature BLE ( Bluetooth low emission) to constantly be synching data between the iWatch and any other Apple devices, especially the iPhone.
The Use Cases.
This is where the device could be life changing:
A mobile wallet.
NFC allows the iWatch to be a contactless payment system, this is not groundbreaking, but add in Touch ID as a security layer and the device becomes something that could allow you to pay for items of significant value. Contactless payment is huge in Europe and waiting to explode in the USA. NFC on the iWatch would be the industry trigger needed to get widespread adoption of this payment mechanism.
All payment information would sync to your iPhone allowing you to keep track of money and expenditure like a true digital wallet.
Travel Tickets/ Security Passes/Coupons
Again aided by Touch ID, the iWatch becomes your ticket to sporting events, airplanes, public transport and your office building. Ticket fraud or fraudulent reselling soon become a thing of the past.
Mobile Coupons.
Mobile coupons are set to become huge, but are being held back by a poor redemption mechanism. Having coupons stored in watched and shared with retailers by NFC would be the slickest way possible. Mobile coupons could be socially shared to increase the value of money off, they could be passed by iBeacons, we’re soon to see an exciting new world of opportunity in mobile coupling and virtual gifting, but driven by the SmartWatch as the carrier.
Your life remote control
From smarter ignitions in cars, with radios preset to your favorites, or seat positions stored, to your connection to your connected home, the iWatch could be the interface for it all. A true connected home could allow your watch to open your house and car doors, turn on heating , shut down white goods, control lighting to chosen settings and more. Our watches could be the default entry point to the entire world of the connected life.
Activity/ Health Tracker.
Your iWatch will monitor your sleep levels, your heart rate, your location, your steps, and a vast number of data points that can come together to record your activity and wellness. Your iWatch will beam information to fitbit style dashboards and could be used to inform doctors of your health, or simply have a dashboard to show sleep patterns and wellness. This area alone is so expansive as to need another blog post for it. But let me leave you with this, between the heart beat levels, sleep activity, the stress your phone picks in your voice, your personal device ecosystem could soon be diagnosing you before you feel ill.
Immersive apps.
Such powerful data can feed any number of apps. Knowing what app ( or game) developers can do with limited information from the iPhone like a compass or accelerometers, just imagine what could be done with a multitude of new inputs. This is like moving from a creative canvas of 2D to 3D.
Knowing your heart rate, sleeping patterns, your location, your diary, we’re going to see incredible things. Look for apps to become richer than ever. You may have apps to send you to sleep, to play music that reflects your mood, to send you special offers to your iWatch to redeem coupons at certain locations. It could turn off your iPhones wifi when you are moving around. The list of whats is possible is endless.
Better mobile “advertising”
And with this unbelievably rich data source, ads to mobile devices could soon become super targeted. You may receive location based offers based on apps you have, your location, your diary, the temperature, your search history. Heck this device knows if you are happy or not. When your devices know everything there is to know about you, targeting will never be the same. It won’t be banner ads, it will be things when you need them. It will be a ticket for the next train being offered to you on your phone with a click because of a pile up on the road home. It will be a money off coupon for an ice cream when it knows your running low on energy and it’s hot outside. This won’t be advertising, please see my other post “https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140623125746-6433797-the-advertising-of-the-future-won-t-look-like-advertising?trk=hb_ntf_MEGAPHONE_ARTICLE_LIKE “ for more info.
GPS and Personal Assistance
The iWatch will be your default screen for most simple needs. Need turn by turn directions or the next train time, just glance at your watch. The iWatch would have predictive technology much like Google Now. It shows you things it thinks you may want to know, it won't alert you, but walking past a store it may show you things you may want from inside, but only a nudge. It may show you the person you seem to be near to's name if you are connected. It will be a continual ambient layer of information should you need it.
Notifications
And yes, rather dull but your iWatch will become your primary place to see whats happening and not your phone.A typical smartphone is turned on 130 times a day, your wrist will become " first line support" for your digital life. You won't be writing on it, but quick glances will be the new elevator waiting behavior as you glance updates, your diary, any messages and heck, even the time!
Conclusion
I’m no Apple fan boy, there is no reason Samsung could not have invented the above, but I see no signs they will. Contrast the use cases with the current Samsung Gear, there are no similarities other than form factor. We'd be wise not to think of the Apple iWatch product as a Watch plus, but as our interface with the digital world.
This will be the start of wearable technology in a way that people feel comfortable with. It won't create barriers between people like Google Glass, it will be a continual, ambient assistive layer, when we want it. It won't make decisions for us, it won't be the start of transhumanism, it will be a little helping hand with whatever we want to do.
NOTE: The title of this post has been changed ( 10:30pm BST) as some felt that I was actually announcing the new Apple iWatch. While the idea briefly made my mum proud, I've changed the wording to ensure that it's clear I am introducing what I think the iWatch could be.
Thoughts?
Tom Goodwin runs the Tomorrow Group, based in London and New York it reimagines advertising for the new world. From experience design to new advertising units to anything.
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