There are 3 broad categories of customers who buy wrist mounted wearables:

1. People who want a tech accessory. Apple does a good job at this, some of the other boutique smart watches do a good job at this.

2. Productivity users, people who want to be reminded of their meetings, have a useful voice control no matter where their phone is at, be able to triage messages as they come in, screen phone calls without taking their phone out, and everyone who has a Fear Of Missing Out. IMHO the Microsoft Band was best of class at this when it came out and kept in the running for quite awhile.

3. Fitness users, these users run a gamut from "how many steps did I take today" to "I train 5 days a week and I want all the data ready to analyze!". Band was originally envisioned to cater to people who had outgrown simple step counters and wanted something more. We weren't a $500 Garmin device, but Band was literally designed for users who wanted good heart rate measurements (chest strap will always be the best), GPS tracking on runs, and a companion for Crossfit classes.

> That's how you get to charge $450 per unit sold.

Garmin sells $500 units that you can take on a week long hike, get lost with, and they'll lead you back out on day 5.

The target audience for those vs the Apple Watch is of course much different! It is a completely different product, the commonality is in some overlap of functionality, and the fact that they are both worn on the wrist.

Or to put it another way, I and some friends, would wear our bands to boxing practice.

Not an Apple Watch use case. :)

Category #4 is people who want a nice looking watch that feels like a _watch_ and _is_ a watch first and foremost, but also does all of that "health" stuff better than anything else and shows notifications. This category describes me.

This is, apparently, the category that Microsoft wasn't even aware of. :-)

>> Garmin sells $500 units

The question is, how does their volume (and revenues, and mindshare) compare to those of Apple Watch? I've recently seen a statistic that Watch is now a bigger business than iPod ever was.

Category #5 Folks who want to show off they got a $500 watch

Category #6 The only watch that I can wear and go to a party full of Rolex guys and still feel more modern.

I feel dorky as hell wearing it around a casio. You must have some swagger, or even dorkier friends.

IMO, I want everything is not really a category.

The Apple Watch certainly skimps on Battery life and can feel unwieldy to wear.

It in many ways, falls squarely into #1. It not being too shabby at #2 and #3 makes Apple Watch 4 the best smart watch on the market, but that is not why it sells.

Apple commands a SUPREME-esque brand value and the first couple of Apple Watch versions sold in millions despite being a clear #1 type of smart watch. ie. a fashion accessory.

> Category #4 is people who want a nice looking watch that feels like a _watch_ and _is_ a watch first and foremost, but also does all of that "health" stuff better than anything else and shows notifications. This category describes me.

Sure, but technology has its limits!

Battery tech is a huge one right now.

But, let's take the UV sensor as an example. The Microsoft Band was one of the first mass market consumer wearables to have a UV sensor on it (there were dedicated devices that beat it to market, barely).

Now UV is hard to work with in that a lot of transparent materials (lens) block it. UV sensors also aren't small, and they need to be positioned in a place that'll get a lot of exposure if the user is in the sun.

That is how the Band ended up with its UV sensors on its back[0]. It isn't pretty, but if we wanted to make a useful sun exposure feature (and we did!), that sort of sensor placement becomes needed.

It took the mechanical engineering team a lot of work to get a precisely placed UV sensor, with a proper lens material on front of it, calibrated to measure UV in a way that is relevant for human exposure, at a cost that can go into a mass market consumer product.

Size is another issue. At launch, Band's main body was actually thinner than anything else in its feature class, but still every reviewer complained about how thick it was!

> This is, apparently, the category that Microsoft wasn't even aware of. :-)

We were aware, but leadership consciously made the choice to not go after that market.

To put it in perspective, Apple has reportedly sank well over a billion dollars into the Apple Watch, they are on generation 4, and yet it is still not a perfect device that does everything for everyone. (And being Apple, I imagine that isn't their goal.)

Honestly technology just isn't there yet. Batteries are too big, sensors are too power hungry, screens are too power hungry, and the electronics take up too much room. (And GPS antennas aren't shrinking much, laws of physics and all that!)

It is like those fold out smartphones everyone wants. Just unwrap it like a scroll.

I've actually seen, played with, screens that you can unwrap. They are super cool. All the technology that goes around those screens, well... CPUs are less flexible than OLEDs.

[0]https://www.alphr.com/sites/alphr/files/styles/insert_main_w...

>> It is like those fold out smartphones everyone wants. Just unwrap it like a scroll.

Along with "transparent" displays you see in Avengers movies, this is something nobody _actually_ wants. It looks cool as a render, but it's completely impractical, and if the product like this existed and someone bought it, they'd take it back to the store the same day and get a refund. "Design is how it works".

UV sensor was really the only thing that drew me to the Microsoft Band

may I ask who the supplier of your sensor was in the end ?

I consider myself in a category waiting to be served. The only features I care about are health monitoring. I was initially excited about the Apple Watch because of the rumored health features, but very few made it to the final product.

To be clear, I don’t mean fitness tracking - I don’t care about that. I mean all the other variables that a device on my wrist could track that could be vital to preemptive diagnosis or explaining a new issue. The need to charge the watch nightly was a total dealbreaker - many of the variables I want to track are during my sleep.

All the other watch features are worthless to me - I have my phone for those. I want a “watch” to focus/differentiate on the things only a device attached to my skin 24/7 can do.

Well in my experience, charging the Apple Watch takes about half an hour, about the time it takes to prepare in the morning. If you rather require 100% coverage, how about buying two watches? I think that redundancy might be your answer. There even is an Apple support page about it: https://support.apple.com/HT205792

This is when the Amazefit Blip and the related Xiomi smart watch is having 15days operating time between battery recharges. There are some garmin bands which does not require recharging, because it runs on two watch type button cells which will last 6 months +.

This sounds really good. If one rather likes to stick with Apple's ecosystem, an exchangable or external battery could help much, too.

This is insanity. Just buy a FitBit!

> They're on the upper side of one's wrist because they're also a fashion accessory.

Apple watch is the ugliest possible watch to wear if you want to wear it as a fashion accessory, non-smart watches are fashion accessories. Apple Watch is just less ugly than most of the other smartwatches, but it's still ugly as a fashion accessory

I disagree (and so does Hodinkee). I think it's understated and beautiful, and half a dozen of my other watches (some pretty expensive) have been collecting dust.

But even if I were to agree, it also happens to be the best looking "smart" watch on the market by quite a wide margin, by far not the ugliest looking watch overall, and the only one that doesn't scream "I'm a computer" at you.

You don't have to run faster than the bear, you only have to run faster than the next slowest guy.

To me the it just looks like a screen hooked to a acceptable wristband.

Because that's what it is.

A completely different world from a beautiful watch.

The "fashion accessory" factor is related to the iPhone popularity: it's a relatively expensive status symbol with the Apple boost.

That's probably because you don't own one. There are dozens of small details which make it unquestionably a watch, and which no manufacturer other than Apple can even see as significant, not to mention replicate.

Compared to most Android Wear devices Apple Watch is way closer to a phone than a watch...

That fails when the quantities fall below a certain threshold. If the two people are slow enough, both of them may get eaten by the bear.

That’s fashion for you. https://imgur.com/a/FXEqCCm

Notice that it's showing the "pairing" swarm code, meaning it's not initialized. Dude is wearing it just to show off the watch. :-)

Dude is wearing it because Apple paid him a sizeable amount to wear it, I reckon. ;)

I don't believe Apple would do such a thing. Whenever you see Apple products in movies and elsewhere, those aren't product placements.

Of course Apple would never do such a thing. They're an R&D company first and foremost.

> this comment may reveal why Apple is crushing everybody else: they understood the user and sold that user a _watch_ rather than a "media consumption" device.

On the flip side, if Apple isn't crushing everybody else, it's because they misunderstood typical users and thought they wanted a tiny phone on the wrist, rather than a watch.

Disclosure: Fitbit employee, but I don't speak for Fitbit. My opinion that Apple isn't crushing everybody else isn't based on any inside info, but on the article below that reported that less than half of Holiday 2017 Apple Watch sales were the then-current model. Most of their sales were discounted old inventory, so usually they didn't get to charge $450 per unit sold.

https://investorplace.com/2018/02/holiday-apple-watch-sales-...

> On the flip side, if Apple isn't crushing everybody else, it's because they misunderstood typical users and thought they wanted a tiny phone on the wrist, rather than a watch.

I think Apple didn't really have a strong focus in their original vision for Apple Watch, and threw stuff on the wall to see what would stick; the same was true for users who expected an iPhone on their wrist. However, it quickly became clear what Apple Watch was good for and what it didn't do well, so, recognizing that, Apple Watch has started selling quite well.

Where did you see this statistic in the article?: "the article below that reported that less than half of Holiday 2017 Apple Watch sales were the then-current model."

The only place where they do any such split is the graph and it shows total number of units sold in 2015-2017.

"Canalys says Apple Watch sales for the holiday quarter alone were 8 million, and nearly half of those were the new Apple Watch Series 3 — which we’ve already pegged as a game-changer."

> On the flip side, if Apple isn't crushing everybody else, it's because they misunderstood typical users and thought they wanted a tiny phone on the wrist, rather than a watch.

They understood their target demographic perfectly, and are making a product for them.

They "misunderstood typical users" so badly, apparently, that they sold more watches than the entire Swiss watch industry combined. I wish I could misunderstand my typical users as bad as Apple does.

> I primarily use my Series 4 Apple watch as a watch and heart/activity monitoring device.

I'm honestly confused as to why you didn't just buy a FitBit? The batteries last longer, they're lighter and more comfortable, and they're much cheaper.

> Another misunderstanding of what watches are about. They're on the upper side of one's wrist because they're also a fashion accessory.

Oh, I see...

Privacy. Fitbit logs to their online platform, and Apple logs to your phone.

That $450 isn’t a “fashion” price. There is a lot of expensive tech in those watches.