Apple
The Apple Watch
When asked about the device at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference on Tuesday, he implied that the Apple Watch will be the first smartwatch consumers really care about.
He likened the Apple Watch to the iPod and iPad, saying that although tablets and MP3 players existed beforehand, many of them weren't very easy to use.
Here's what he said at the conference, according to a transcript from iMore:
If you think about the, for those of you can remember, the MP3 industry, before the iPod - we weren't the first company to make an MP3; there were lots of companies in the... you may not be able to remember that, but there were lots of them out there. They weren't used very much. They were fundamentally too hard to use, and the user interface was really bad. You almost needed a PhD to use these. They weren't, they're not memorable. They didn't really move the dial.
And the tablet business was kind of like this, too. There were lots of tablets shipping when the iPad came out. But there was nothing earth-shattering. There were very niche-y kind of applications; you probably weren't using one like you're using now.
And so I see the smart watch category very much like that. There are several things that are called "smart watches" that are shipping, but I'm not sure you could name any. Maybe you could. I'm not sure the audience could name very many. But certainly there's been none that have changed the way people live their lives.
This is somewhat true - there are plenty of smartwatches out there that are clunky and big, or that do too many things and aren't very simple. It's unclear, however, whether or not the Apple Watch will be one of the first devices to change that.
We expect to learn more about what the Apple Watch can do in April when it ships.