You will be hard pressed to find a market analyst (or anyone for that matter) who does not believe that the Apple Watch will be a force to be reckoned with from the moment it launches this year. Among them is Oppenheimer & Co.’s Andrew Uerkwitz who expects that Apple will find dominate the smartwatch market for years to come despite its entry later than many competitors.
Uerkwitz goes on to predict that the Apple Watch launch could disrupt the smartwatch market much as the original Apple iPhone did when it first launched in 2007:
Our trip to CES 2015 confirmed our view that Apple Watch is unlikely to have competition from other wearable and smartwatch makers. We believe its combination of creative user interface and hardware design will pose multiple-year leadership over competition, in similar ways to the iPhone.
Apple introduced the Apple Watch when it unveiled the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus but has yet to reveal all of the smartwatch’s functionality. Our initial glimpse did not reveal anything that we have not seen before on other smartwatches but it’s likely that Apple has kept a few surprises for closer to the launch.
Uerkwitz expects that Apple will launch the Apple Watch sometime in March along with an “updated iPad of differentiated display size” (the oft-rumoured larger iPad Pro?).
Sources : Barrons // G for Games