The Apple Watch (above) has no real rival out there. It’s the smartwatch most people want, and the smartwatch other companies can’t beat. Apple’s recent earnings report for the Christmas quarter further drove that point, as the wearables category saw a surge to $10 billion, up 37% from the previous year. Both the Apple Watch and the AirPods are included in that category, and both sold really well during the Black Friday sales events leading to Christmas. Apple didn’t share any sales figures but said that some 75% of Apple Watch customers are new users and that it struggled to meet Apple Watch 3 demand during the period. Mind you, that’s a two-year-old device, but one that sold for incredible prices, much lower than its usual $199.99 price tag. So if you can’t beat the Apple Watch with a brand new design or new software experience, you might as well go for a shameless copycat. Enter Oppo’s Apple Watch.
“With a flexible screen and curved design, this may be the smartest watch this year,” a rough Google translation of a Weibo post reads, next to the following image:
No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, that is not an Apple’s Apple Watch. Just look at the curved edges, which you totally don’t need on a wearable device, and the two buttons on the side, one of which is replacing Apple’s signature Digital Crown.
Everything else screams Apple Watch, however. The overall design, the watchface, and the watch bands are almost perfect replicas of the real thing.
There’s no way to hide the fact that the device above is an Apple Watch clone, and it’ll be tough to defend the originality of this design. Long-time Samsung leaker Ice Universe posted the teaser on Twitter, asking fans how it looked:
OPPO's first smartwatch rendering, how does it look? pic.twitter.com/jNsqMV3X50
— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) January 30, 2020
Unsurprisingly, people think it looks like an Apple Watch. Oppo is hardly the only company trying to replicate the success of the Apple Watch. Just last year I told you that the Galaxy Watch in the following press render looked a lot like an Apple Watch. The image leaked before Samsung announced the device. However, that wearable featured a different design than the Apple Watch.
That said, it’s unclear when Oppo’s Apple Watch will launch or how much it’ll cost. But we’ll probably learn more details about it in the following weeks.
