In a few short weeks, Apple is going to launch a smartwatch. By the time the company finally announced it was working on a watch, it didn’t come as much of a surprise, but considering how infrequently the company steps into new product categories, it’s still interesting to consider why Apple would place a bet on wearables. And why now?
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In a recent interview with Fast Company, Tim Cook discussed how Apple reaches these decisions.
“When Apple looks at what categories to enter, we ask these kinds of questions: What are the primary technologies behind this? What do we bring? Can we make a significant contribution to society with this? If we can’t, and if we can’t own the key technologies, we don’t do it.”
If Apple can’t bring something new to the table, it won’t bring anything at all. This was the case with the Apple Watch as well — had the engineers and developers not created something they thought could change the landscape of the wearable market, there wouldn’t have been any March media event for the Apple Watch. There wouldn’t be an Apple Watch at all.
“We weren’t first on the MP3 player; we weren’t first on the tablet; we weren’t first on the smartphone,” Cook told Fast Company. “But we were arguably the first modern smartphone, and we will be the first modern smartwatch—the first one that matters.
