Can the Apple Watch Transform the Fashion and Healthcare Industries?
Technology can be sexy. Just ask Vogue, which is featuring an eye-popping 12-page advert from Apple for the Apple Watch in its March issue. The images feature minimalistic images of the smartwatch, focusing on the design of the product rather than its capabilities. A product that was once touted as Apple’s most personal product yet is now being marketed as a fashion accessory.
With estimates on the Watch Edition varying wildly from $5,000 to $19,999, Watch could be the next big ticket luxury fashion item. And certainly the design of the smartwatch is enough to leave many salivating for a release date. But tech hasn’t succeeded in fashion before: not when Will.I.Am introduced his Puls smartwatch as part of a line of “fashionology” products, nor a couple years before when celebrated designer Diane von Furstenberg included Google Glass as an accessory in one of her runway shows.
Can Apple change that perception? The tech giant has reinvented the mobile and smartphone market as well as the way music is sold and distributed: if any company can break the line between tech and fashion, it’s this one.
A smartwatch should be more than an accessory though: it’s supposed to make your life easier, and add enough value to your day-to-day routine to make you want to regularly wear it. Folks were seriously excited about the health and fitness applications and capabilities in the Apple Watch, but have since been disappointed by the news released.
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Apple made the move to hire sever digital health sensor experts, and experts thought that the company was going to be able to overcome the technical, regulatory and usability challenges that come with sensing and helping consumers act on vital data like blood pressure, glucose, oxygenation and stress levels.
Although the fitness tracking apps seem to be akin to any other fitness tracker on the market, don’t expect more beyond that in regards to health and fitness. Game changer for healthcare? Probably not. But future iterations have the chance to be.
