Isaiah Adams is the manager of social media development at marketing research and analytics firm Optimization Group, Mich. This is an edited version of a post that originally appeared here under the title, “What the Apple Watch means for market research.”
Smart watches are nothing new. They even date back to as early as 1972. On Tuesday, Apple’s highly anticipated iPhone 6 launch party unveiled their “next big thing” – the Apple Watch. Other powerhouse companies such as Samsung, Sony and Motorola are already players in the smart watch space. So why are people flipping over cars in the streets with excitement over Apple’s latest announcement? Besides the fact that Apple has an incredible track record for creating products that revolutionize our daily lives, Apple’s latest release is exciting because it shows us that they still understand what it takes to make “magic” happen.
When the iPhone was first released it was not great because it had a clean design, intuitive user interface and new apps; but rather it furthered our ability to integrate and sync our lives together. Not only could we now automatically sync our phone’s treasured files seamlessly with our desktop computer but apps were now communicating with each other better than ever before. That’s where the magic happened. Apple gave us the ability to sync what were previously separate worlds into one, unified universe.
As I watched the recording of the unveiling of the Apple Watch, I started to wonder how this next evolution in smart watch technology would impact people on a day-to-day basis and eventually how it might affect market research.
If you’re one who would stop me by saying, “Why are we even talking about this? The Apple Watch is a niche accessory at best,” let me first explain why I make the assumption that this will soon impact people’s daily lives on a large scale.
Yes, the known features of the Apple Watch are not a reason to jump for joy. These features are generally available through different wearables already on the market. What makes this different is Apple’s superior marketing and distributing power. They’ve already begun to leverage this by striking deals with some of the leading health systems, in an effort to diversify their HealthKit.
Apple has a history of defining a category.