Apple moves into wearable tech

published 12 March 2015

Technology giant Apple unveiled the Apple Watch this week, its first venture into wearable technology. Hailed by the firm as "the most advanced timepiece ever created", the gadget ranges in price from $349 to $17,000.

What the commentators said

The bottom line, added Farhad Manjoo in The New York Times, is that "just about anything you can do with your [iPhone], you can do faster with your watch. Whether you're booking a lift with Uber or answering a text, you can "interact with the digital world at a glance, in a less outwardly antisocial way than you do now with your phone".

But the snag, said The Economist, is that the watch only works in conjunction with an iPhone. "This is not unlike selling someone a wristwatch that requires a pocket watch to work." Users will just be adding another device to their "growing menageries" rather than replacing one. And will people really want to shell outso much money for something that barely does any more than their iPhone?

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Apple's first product since Steve Jobs's death seems "unlikely to be remembered as a stellar success". However, as batteries become more efficient and prices fall, the market for wearable technology is set to grow. As the world's biggest technology company, with $200bn in sales over the past year, "Apple has time on its side".

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.