Now that Google has thrown down the gauntlet for wearable tech with Android Wear, everyone is antsy to see how Apple will respond. Rumors of an iWatch have been floating around for years, but now that the market has finally begun to grow, many analysts and bloggers are assuming that the announcement of an Apple smartwatch is inevitable. Mike Oertli disagrees.
According to OpTe.ch’s Oertli, “there is no iWatch.” He has continued a discussion started by Craig Hockenbury at Furbo and Ben Bajarin at Techpinions, both of whom believe that Apple won’t be releasing its own wearable hardware any time soon.
“It’s my view that the technology needed to make that great product that does everything just isn’t there yet,” says Hockenbury. “There are too many compromises.”
Bajarin takes the argument even further, claiming that Apple’s recently revealed Healthbook for iOS 8 might be the company’s answer to the market:
“In Apple’s case, the only way they could address this space is to make many products — all with specific appeal to parts of this segment. This is why I think the Healthbook concept, if real, could be very telling of Apple’s strategy.”
Rather than design its own device, Apple would simply provide the tools to create an ecosystem on third-party hardware, allowing Tim Cook and co. to have a presence in the market without throwing another smartwatch into the ring (or the iRing, if you will).
No one expects Apple to avoid the world of wearable tech entirely, but the probability of an iWatch seems less and less likely.
