At the top of the front page of WSJ.com is an ad, and a large one, for Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) new watch. Why advertise at all, if Apple Watch sales are wildly successful? Maybe the ads are a sign that they are not.
The Apple Watch ads say “Learn More.” For a product with such a widely scrutinized launch, and with the new product so widely dissected, why bother to “Learn More” at all? Analysis and publicity may not have yielded successful sales. The scrutiny has revealed a many features of the watch that are right, but also some things that are not included and should have been. At least they should have been for people who want them.
Apple Watch does what other watches do. It keeps time, precisely. It tells what time it is within 50 milliseconds of what Apple calls the “definitive global standard of time.” It is a feature that will be lost on most people who want to know if it is early or late within five minutes of most other peoples’ clocks. Beyond that, Apple Watch tracks messages and fitness. Many experts think that these and other features of the watch are not enough to allow it to break through as a mainstream product. A point of proof that Apple Watch is not unique enough to capture the market are the IPO plans of smartwatch company FitBit. This point has been made over and over by the press and Wall Street.
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Another way to look at the watch is that Apple management does not see its success as key to the company’s future. iPhone sales make up more of Apple’s revenue. To hear management talk, the importance will only widen. And the leverage will come from contributions of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 8, the creations of which are inevitable. Apple Watch, then, does not matter in the scheme of things that will make Apple’s future bright.
If Apple Watch is not part of what will make Apple’s future bright, why spend millions, or tens of millions, to advertise it? Apple will not tell, so any opinion is no better than a guess.
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