Those fashion-forward shoppers are the types who only know style and how to be fashion-forward when someone tells them. If Apple got Lagerfeld to even DEIGN to wear an Apple Watch, I think they're not going to sing that tune of theirs for long.
No way. One doesn't need a watch but one needed a mobile phone. There's simply not enough ways that this device can revolutionize our day as the iPhone and even the iPad has tons degree. This may enjoy success but in terms of usability, demand, and impact there's no way it will have the reach as its iPhone and iPad brethren.
And now we're seeing a replay of a different kind.
You can say people needed a mobile phone, and you're right. But they didn't need an
iPhone.
Much has been said of the people who outright wrote off the iPhone and iPad and the repeats of that, but you're repeating the often forgotten "moderate" stance that was common of the time of these product launches: that iPhone/iPad would be incredibly successful as a niche/limited scope product but not completely change or influence the market that was current at the time; the "feature phone" was not going anywhere, especially in regions like Asia.
In the case of the iPhone, there were those who knew people saw value to it, but not to the point where smartphones became more common than the standard cell phone with added features. Same was said about netbooks in comparison to iPad (remember those quaint little things?)
And yet here we are, where 75% of all mobile subscribers are using smartphones in Canada and 63% in the US (with Apple alone taking a huge piece of that pie for itself), and the keitai market in Japan (seen as an "impenetrable" market up until as recently as 2010) is suffering some significant hits now that iPhones are the must-own device. That doesn't even factor into what happened when Apple essentially created a tablet market.
I'm certain there are challenges, one being that the market is limited to owners of compatible iPhones (but that's something even Apple themselves are assuredly aware of). But the iPhone user base is no niche, so there's lots of room there.
And yes, no one
needs a watch, just like no one
needed a tablet. You see a lack of demand.
Meanwhile, Apple sees a lot of bare wrists and sees a barely-tapped marketshare for people.
Whether they're people who want their phone out of their hands more often (people in office environments with "no cellphone" policies, people who work in conditions they don't want to take their phone out of their pocket in, the "phone-zombie" conscious who are worried about looking at their phones compulsively, etc.), people who don't own a watch merely because it doesn't integrate with their digital lifestyle (which is evidenced by consumers' push to integrate CarPlay and Android Auto into cars and how hastily the top 10 auto makers did so, among other examples), or simply the people would see it as a fashion accessory first and enjoy the features after.
There is a significant market within the iPhone user base that would buy it, the only discussion left to have is how well Apple can capitalize on it. Given their history, however, I think it's better to air on the side of optimism in that regard. Apple does its homework on these things. And as history shows (even recently with Apple Pay), when Apple enters a market and scores big, the stakes are raised and so is user interest, which will impact smartwatches in general.
