Apple Watch's Enterprise Opportunity And Lessons

 IDC has said that 19.2 million wearables will ship in 2014 (that’s triple the 2013 number) and that shipments will reach 112 million by 2018. While we all know shipped doesn’t always mean sold, this is still great news for both individuals and businesses.

As Tim Cook said on-stage yesterday, “ Apple Watch is the most personal device we've ever created.” I’ve said it before, and agree with Cook now as well, not only are wearables - and specifically smartwatches - personal, but the fact is, they make users more social again. “Personal” is not a word we’ve commonly associated with technology over the last few years yet smartwatches can increase face-to-face interactions, reduce the hours we all spend locked in The Mindless Scroll on our mobile devices and simultaneously free up the battery life of our devices as they spend more time in our pockets and less time in our hands.

The Apple Watch announcement and the promise of the coming WatchKit legitimizes the wearables market that other organizations are already working in to mixed success. While Apple notoriously delivers value to consumers, the real opportunity as I see it is to enterprises. From warehouses to hospitals to hotels and airports, all fast-moving organizations will rely on some form of wearable tech in the years ahead. With Apple Watch, smartwatches have become the most likely point of entry. Even financial traders could benefit from Apple Watch alerting them to actions like a new trade.

For enterprise product teams like our own, Apple Watch, and smartwatches/wearables more generally, represent a great challenge and opportunity as they’re a new frontier in which developers must rethink an entire enterprise experience on a wrist-sized device. How do they continue to provide real value in the face of such limited real estate (pun intended)? How can you rethink your UX, for example, to marry voice activation and visual alerts? Apple today certainly proved that it’s essential to put a premium on UI/UX - the pinch to zoom wouldn’t work on a face that small so now we’ll all begin to familiarize ourselves with new concepts like the “Digital Crown” and “Force Touch”.

I’m in the camp that believes that, even with the new UI that Apple’s asking users to adopt, smartwatches will ultimately succeed and that this consumer trend, like so many others, will ultimately impact enterprises the most. As brands from Opening Ceremony to Tory Burch enter the wearables market and make devices aesthetically pleasing, the “they’re ugly” rebuttal will be surpassed. The constant news of leading fashion designers devoting resources to new technology is a great sign as prevailing fashions often comes down to design and functionality - a parallel to what Apple Watch’s success hinges upon itself. It’s important to remember that Apple hired Burberry CEO, Angela Ahrendts, to run retail and online stores last year too. The fashion influence is increasingly ingrained in the organization.

Wearables like smartwatches can achieve both design and functionality as fashion brands team up with tech partners from FitBit to Intel . If the devices look nice and uncover hidden value for individuals and businesses they become an instant win-win. Apple Watch was unveiled with an emphasis on marrying the more common health and fitness tracker and the currently less common connecting and communicating technologies into one single device (obviously reminiscent of the iPhone consolidating a phone, camera, music player and more into one device). Even in its initial reveal it went far beyond users simply receiving notifications or tracking steps, sleep and calories.

So, as we overcome the “look” issue, we overcome what I see as a major remaining barrier to mass adoption of smartwatches. Smartwatches can now become a part of an individual’s “look” and, as such, they’ll be required to align to personal identities. That requires thoughtful aesthetic considerations and product diversity. Apple Watch is already going to be doing just that with two sizes, three finishes, six straps and - as they highlighted on stage - millions of combinations for personal design and customizations.

One of the biggest realities within the Apple Watch news today is that it only works with the iPhone. These devices are intrinsically linked and that goes back to a core tenet of our own business; there is a time in a place for various kinds of communications and, in concert, the Apple Watch and iPhone meet the vast majority of these needs inside one network. Together they allow users to be coordinated and in communication. While in our own business we respect and observe by the importance of cross-platform capabilities, I can’t help but tip my hat to the ecosystem that Apple is building for businesses.

Additionally, as was stated today, the Apple Watch provides, “a discreet and nuanced experience” and that is just the kind of approach that will enable these new devices to become so omnipresent that they pervade our personal and professional lives. It’s a model that other businesses can follow. This also is a great complement to the news from July of IBM and Apple’s global partnership for enterprise mobility solutions. With that relationship in place and the advent of the iPhone and Apple Watch duo, Apple is seeking to position itself as the de facto, comprehensive hardware solution for any enterprise looking to deploy smartwatches. Personally, we will always develop our solution to support cross-platform organizations as well, but establishing market dominance in an arena that Steve Jobs long said he wasn't interested in specifically catering to - the enterprise - continues to smack of a whole new Apple.

While there are clearly a myriad of other lessons underscored by the maturation of the smartwatch market, the biggest one from yesterday's Apple Watch announcement comes down to UI and communication delivered and accessed across the appropriate device, at the right time, for the right task. Apple Watch even includes the “Digital Touch” app, a communication app that enables the devices to communicate with one another it seems, so that while Apple Watch and other smartwatches allow users to get back to face-to-face communication, it also tasks the device itself with communicating other messages and logistics to make users’ lives easier and more seamless.