The Apple Watch has been on sale for a year. The smartwatch that raised the bar in terms of awareness and expectations for the emerging wearable tech genre hit the shops on 24 April 2015, seven months after it was revealed to the world by Tim Cook.
In its first twelve months it has divided critics, the public and analysts alike.
Trusted Reviews gave the Watch three stars in its review, saying: “Loyal Apple fans with money to spend can tolerate its issues, but it’s for early adopters only right now [and] if you’re used to picking up an Apple product and working out how to use it in minutes the Apple Watch will disappoint you.”
Stuff awarded the Apple Watch full marks, stating: “It’s a very cool gadget – more desirable and more luxurious than the smartwatches that have gone before it, but also a platform that will be supported and stretched by more app developers than the likes of Pebble or Android Wear can realistically attract.”
For Apple Watch sales figures we’ve seen forecasts ranging from 9 million to 30 million. A recent report from Juniper Research claimed that the Apple Watch made up 52% of the total smartwatch shipments in 2015 – estimated to be around 30.3 million.
Apple is keeping quiet on official numbers but the WSJ has just reported that it sold twice as many Watches as iPhones in each device’s debut year. It’s on sale in almost 12,000 locations in 48 countries.
A year on and a number of long-term verdicts have hit the web, all attempting to decipher whether or not the Apple Watch is a success story or not.
“After using the Apple Watch for a year, I don't think it's the breakthrough gadget many were hoping for,” writes Steve Kovach for Business Insider. “It has spent more time in my nightstand drawer than on my wrist.
“My original criticism from when I first reviewed the Apple Watch a year ago still stands: Apple made it do too much and you're better off ignoring most of the features.”
Andrew Cunningham on Ars Technica argues that the Apple Watch, like the first-gen iPhone, is a work in progress that hints at a brighter smartwatch future.
“The Apple Watch is doing fine,” he states. “It’s certainly not the abject failure that some people have already tried to declare it. The iPod and iPhone weren’t overnight successes. They took a few years to ramp up into mass-market moneymakers, and Apple spent those years iterating on the hardware and software, revising constantly until all the rough first-generation edges were smoothed away. The Apple Watch as it exists is still rough and limited in a lot of ways, but hopefully another year or two of improvements will help it realize its full potential.”
It’s an argument that’s backed up by James Stables of Wareable. “The Apple Watch has been a success for the company,” he writes. “In 12 months it's become the number one smartwatch manufacturer and along with Fitbit, taken control of a nascent wearables market. Not bad for a one-year-old.”
However, he also says that the smartwatch is “undercooked and under developed”.
“It wasn't until the release of watchOS 2 – the big update that dropped in October – that Apple allowed developers to access the smartwatches sensors. That act was an anchor, dragging against the launch momentum of the device, which incidentally still lacks quality apps.”
It seems that, like those original reviews and the analyst sales figures, opinions on the Apple Watch are as muddled and divisive as ever. There’s no definitive answer to the question as to whether the Cupertino timepiece is the best smartwatch so far.
But, what is clear, is that the Apple Watch has raised the public’s smartwatch consciousness. In the same way that the iPad rejuvenated an ailing tablet market, the Apple Watch has boosted an embryonic market and put pressure on the likes of Samsung, Sony, Google and the other major tech players to raise their smartwatch game.
Have you got an Apple Watch? Let us know what you think of Apple’s debut wearable in the comments.
