I dropped everything to make apps for the Apple Watch. I’ve owned the Watch from day one and I admit it is has its shortcomings, but oh my does it have potential.
The device convinced my co-founders and me to start Tap Get to work exclusively on Apple Watch apps — early, while the rest of the world is still making up its mind about smartwatches and other wearables.
To catch a wave, you need to be in the water. Right now, these are relatively uncontested waters: There are 8,500 apps for the Watch in total, a tiny fraction of the number for iPhone.
It’s easier to get noticed in the early days, and don’t forget that every Apple Watch is paired with an iPhone. Win users, gain traction, then segue into the larger iPhone market. And it’s not just apps you can make for the Watch — hardware could be a big hit too.
Apple Watch is big and getting bigger
The Apple Watch is already bigger than was hoped. Yet only a few months after the tidal wave of hype at launch, some skeptics are already hailing the flop of the Apple Watch and pronouncing it dead.
Why so hasty? Whenever Apple released new products during the last decade, the initial impressions of how we thought they would be used — and what actually made them massive hits — were hardly ever the same.
Remember when the first iPhone launched? It was cool, but what was it for? This “Internet Communications Device” had no third-party apps and it didn’t even support copy and paste.
I doubt anyone then foresaw it being used by millions of people to fling angry birds at green pigs, take a billion selfies, or give rise to a $16 billion app like WhatsApp.
The iPhone was a complete departure from everything else that came before it. It took almost 2 years to gain momentum but then it became the blueprint for literally every smartphone since.
Apple Watch is killing it
Just like the iPhone, the Apple Watch is unprecedented. How big it will become is still anyone’s guess but based on comparisons with other first-generation Apple launches, the Watch is killing it.
Apple has sold 210 million iPhones last year, but in its first year it sold only 5.4 million. Tim Cook says the Apple Watch is already exceeding that pace, and we haven’t even had an “Aha!” moment with it yet.
Either the Swiss or Apple should be worried
Some may be surprised to learn that 80 percent of luxury Swiss watch brands use the same movements made by one manufacturer, ETA SA Manufacture Horlogère Suisse (owned by Swatch). The value in a Swiss watch is in how brands customize the insides and case design — and how the watches make people feel.
A watch is more than a device; it’s a statement.
Consider the Apple Watch as a watch movement, one that is infinitely more customizable on the inside than anything mechanical. How long will it be before we see brands using it as the base for luxury watches and creating an entirely new market segment? Could making base movements even be a way for someone else to play catch up using Android?
‘Mobile-first’ is so 2014
As of today, nobody has quite figured out what the killer app is for the Apple Watch.
The race is on. There’s no doubt Apple will continue improving the Watch for at least three years, so it’s really a matter of when, not if, these apps emerge and the next wave of multibillion-dollar startups arrives.
To make this happen, developers will need to see the Watch with completely fresh eyes. They will need to ditch the “mobile-first” attitude and embrace “watch-first” thinking.
Some developers are creating Watch apps without ever touching one, relying solely on the simulator; this approach won’t work.
Apple Watch is not a small iPhone for the wrist to add bolt-on features for existing apps. Those who recognize that are the ones who are going to make the Apple Watch big. It’s just a matter of time.
Keeran Janin is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder at Tap Get, a startup focused exclusively on watch-first products
9 responses to “Why I dropped everything to create Apple Watch apps”
“Remember when the first iPhone launched? It was cool, but what was it for?”
A lot of people knew exactly what it was for. It was the next Blackberry, but aimed at business and non-business users. That was the primary directive.
“How big it will become is still anyone’s guess but based on comparisons with other first-generation Apple launches, the Watch is killing it.”
The watch suffers from over hype from users wanting to be the first to hold a next generation device. Unlike the iPhone, which people at least knew what it was good for, not many people knew what the Apple Watch is capable of other than telling the time. They were and are expecting to be wowed just like they did with all past Apple products.
“As of today, nobody has quite figured out what the killer app is for the Apple Watch.”
I believe there is no killer app, just like there is no killer app for the iPhone. The killer feature of the iPhone is convenience. The killer feature of Apple Watch is even more convenience. People enjoy buying things that make their lives more convenient.
You are wrong.
When the iPhone was introduced in 2007 many people, including well known tech leaders like Steve Ballmer and the then CEO of Blackberry, laughed at it and predicted that the iPhone would fail.
Even still, selling 5 million iPhones in its first year of sales was seen as a huge success story. In the Apple Watch’s first 3 months it sold about as many as the iPhone did in its entire first year. This is definitely a major success story, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.
And NO, when the first iPhone was introduced people DID NOT “at least knew what it was good for” since it took a whole year until apps and the App Store were available (around the same time that the second generation iPhone came out).
With the Apple Watch, an Apple Watch app store and hundreds of apps were available IMMEDIATELY on its launch. If anything, people knew more about what the first generation Apple Watch was good for (and had apps to use) than they did with the first generation iPhone (which had NO apps or App Store!).
If you believe that “there is no killer app for the iPhone”, then you must also believe that almost a billion people on the planet who own iPhones are insane, while you are the only sane person in the world who believes that the “emperor has no clothes”… You know what they call a syndrome like that?
I knew immediately what a proper iPhone would be good for as soon as I saw the poorly executed Motorola ROKR and imagined what it would take to show video at the proper aspect ratio on a full-screen iPod with what would have to be changeable onscreen controls that went away so as not to obstruct the video or waste space physically by making the case bigger without making the screen bigger and wider.
I had no idea the App Store was coming though. That to me is the killer feature of the iPhone. Customized by function instead of looks.
Whoa, Nelly! “You are wrong” is tough stuff, blunt, too black-and-white and, on comment boards, usually wrong itself!
People misread others, forget the nuances, or provide limited, self-confirmatory evidence!
You don’t really want to cite Balmer and the CEO of Blackberry as evidence that people thought the iPhone would flop, do you?! Of course, they were going to scoff at the iPhone publicly. They were heading up competing companies! And were two leaders (besides Nokia’s and Palm’s chairs) with vested interests in seeing Apple and the iPhone fail! Privately, they may have been worried as all get out about the design coup Apple had pulled off. And none of them proved very astute judges of technology or the kind one would to cite as observers!
We know that Samsung certainly decided to copy the iPhone systematically and its CEO may even have made skeptical to the press–all while stealing the design!
Now, what the tech press and leading analysts (Mossberg, Pogue, etc) generally thought at the time is an empirical question — many certainly repeat the claim that people generally thought it would flop, but I think there could be some urban legend effect going on here and no one really checks! Jobs’s Reality Distortion Field in reverse to showcase Apple’s brilliance?!
The same effect is already happening with the Apple Watch. The reviews were overwhelmingly positive, if containing caveats such as not for everybody, or version 2 will have more mass appeal. But that hasn’t stopped any number of tech writers from recently claiming that the initial reviews were largely negative!
If i remember correctly the stock price of most if not all the mobile phone makers dove when the iPhone was officially announced. They never recovered since.
That said however, It’s hard to see how the watch will become like the iPhone or iPad even if both devices were met with considerable objection and criticism at the start as well. The form factor has many limitations particularly being tethered to an iPhone. It needs to be its own computing device to open it to more applications. As tech advances that will surely happen in time.
The move to open the watch to native apps though is the right move for apple. Potentially, someone somewhere will think of something good for it….potentially.
Perhaps in the short term more accurate health sensors will help the product bridge to the next big iteration of this product line.
Nice ruminations! So, what does Tap Get do? If they’ll let you, adding it to the column would be helpful!
Is there a stock app where you can glance at 20 stock prices at once? I have just seen the basic one running on the display apple watches in store. If not someone make this app please.
I dropped everything to make apps for the Apple Watch. I’ve owned the Watch from day one and I admit it is has its shortcomings, but oh my does it have potential.