SAN FRANCISCO – Apple is almost over for the hard part: making a smart watch
Soon comes the hard part – selling watch the highly anticipated, Apple Watch, a consumer. which so far have not been thrilled with the idea of bringing a computer in the body.
The first batch of smart watches, companies like Samsung, Motorola and LG, did not sell well and had an acceptance particularly good. And devices like eyeglasses Google Glass, which received widespread attention, although sales have been greeted with considerable skepticism.
But Apple has been in this same situation. Most consumers are not interested in the tablets before Apple launched its iPad. Nor thinking of buying smart phones before the iPhone launch. In both cases, the company exceeded the initial skepticism.
The Apple clock, which was introduced last September and is expected to hit stores in April, is a miniature computer that is worn on the wrist ; has a touchscreen and a crown to operate the device. There are three models sold each at a different price, and the straps are interchangeable.
Apple has touted Apple Watch as a device that can attract a wide range of consumers, such as exercise enthusiasts and collectors luxury watches. But it has limited their functions, making it look more like a clock, something that they can more easily identify a simple technological accessory that looks like a watch, says Ben Bajarin, an analyst for consumer technology at Creative Strategies.
“This is a completely new category. Most do not have any frame of reference with smart watch” added went down.
It is expected that Apple says more about the prices. The initial price of a basic clock Apple is $ 350, but the company has not said how much more you have to pay for luxury models such as Apple Watch Edition, made of 18 carat gold. The watch enthusiasts calculate that cost over $ 10,000.
The clock requires a connection to an iPhone to fully function.
Inside Apple, the team members who worked on clock, code-named Gizmo, said it was a difficult engineering challenge. Three project staff agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.
In an effort to maintain secrecy, engineers tested the watch outside the office even built a false case, which made the device Samsung Apple look like a clock, a source revealed.
The people who created the watch is called the “star team” by Apple employees. The best designers and engineers who worked on the iPhone, the iPad and Mac are part of that team, revealed several Apple employees. Among the most prominent executives are Jony Ive, Apple’s design chief; Jeff Williams, chief operating officer; and Kevin Lynch, former Adobe executive who heads the clock software development.
The employees claimed that it was very difficult get the powerful chips and sensors on the circuit board clock, which is the size of a postage stamp.
Almost two years ago, the company experienced with advanced physiological sensors that monitor blood pressure and stress, among other variables. Many of these experiments were abandoned more than 18 months ago, when they saw that the sensors were unreliable and cumbersome, the sources added.
Long ago, Apple decided that the first version of the product would be a sensor heart rate and movement, to sell the device as a couple of iPhone to monitor fitness. It also has a chip that allows wireless payments.
The battery was also a concern in such a small device and engineers reflected on how much energy to recharge the watch. Previously, the company had experimented with many ways to recharge the watch, such as solar energy. It was finally decided by the induction method in which an electric current creates a magnetic field, which in turn generates the voltage to power the watch.
Apple has said it estimated watch battery to last a full day, requiring the user to recharge at night, as it does with your smartphone. The company also created a function, yet to be announced called Power Reserve, mode in which the clock function with little energy, showing only the time as an employee.
Apple launched the clock a little later I expected due to technological problems. Probably one of the impediments was that several key employees left the ship. Nest Labs, maker of smart devices that was acquired by Google last year, a few engineers who were the best team in the watch was, according to two people. Among them was Brian James, former director of iPod software and reached Nest as vice president of engineering in early 2014.
Still, when Apple launched his watch in April, will enter a market and flooded with smart watches running Android Wear, a version of the Google Android operating system.
So far, the results of Android smart watches have been disappointing. In 2014, 720,000 were sent to market with Android smart watches, according to Canalys research firm.
Daniel Matte, analyst at Canalys, said it would be premature to say that smart watches are a failure based on these figures . He predicted that Apple will watch the best selling smart watch next year.
But it is unlikely that this watch will change the outlook Apple, at least for now. Tonu Sacconaghi, financial analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, thinks the clock made only a modest contribution to the line of Apple’s earnings this year. I expected that Apple will send 7.5 million watches market in the second half of its fiscal year.
That is little compared to the tens of millions of iPhones that snatch on the shelves each quarter.
The companies that create applications for watches probably play an important role in defining the purpose of the Apple clock, as they did the developers on the iPhone and iPad.
Tero Kuittinen, director of Frank N. Magid Associates, a consultant for application developers, said he had spoken with about 20 application developers on Apple clock. Most of them, he said, had a “cautious optimism”. But they worry that applications for watches are not as lucrative as phones, because the tiny screen limits the functions and, worse, the ads. .
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