Apple smart watch
The Apple Watch has been in the market for a full quarter now and the early reviews indicated that it is the best smartwatch right now but not exactly a must-buy. It didn’t stop big developers from expanding their app functionality to the Apple Watch though. This helped the Apple Watch App Store break the 8,000 apps barrier recently. Top that off with impressive an impressive fiscal Q3 2015 earnings report and it looks easy to conclude that it is time to ride on the watchOS bandwagon.
I personally don’t think watchOS is a huge deal right now primarily because of one mystery that Apple didn’t address – Just how many Apple Watch units did Cupertino sell? Even if the sales reportedly beat the company’s expectations, the functionality of the Apple Watch is still limited. This recent report cements that fact. If you own an Apple Watch, you will notice that there isn’t even a Facebook app yet. The Instagram app is quite practical but the folks at Facebook aren’t even sure if they can bring a fully functional app to such a small screen.
On top of that, the aforementioned source also pointed out that it could cost around $10,000 to $50,000 to develop an Apple Watch app which is about the same cost of development for a standard iOS app. Investing that much money is risky especially if we don’t know how many people own a watch and actually use it on a daily basis.
People still prefer doing most of their interactions on their phone with the smartwatch serving as a second window for glanceable info. If you currently have an iOS app on the App Store and can think of a good idea that benefits Apple Watch users, go ahead and work on adding Apple Watch support because it will definitely give your app more credibility. But making an Apple Watch app from scratch? I wouldn’t be so worried just yet. Besides, watchOS 2 is on the horizon and hopefully that will boost consumer and developer interest.