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Comment by PopePompus | Hacker News Reader

Well, I respectfully disagree. The Apple Watch is a successful product, but it really didn't completely disrupt a large existing industry like the iPhone did. I think it's possible that the M1 will trigger the death of x86 personal computers. If that happens, it won't have been an iPhone-level disruption, but it will be a lot more significant than the watch.

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> The Apple Watch is a successful product, but it really didn't completely disrupt a large existing industry

For some values of large?

>Apple now sells more watches than the entire Swiss watch industry

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/5/21125565/apple-watch-sales...

The Swiss watch industry isn't what it was. Most people I know don't wear a watch.

Wait, where did the goal posts go. Has anyone seen them? I swear they were here a minute ago.

To be fair to the person you're responding to, the goalposts look to have been "disrupt a large existing industry." "Large" is obviously subjective, but if the example of the disrupted industry is the watch industry, "the watch industry isn't large so it doesn't count" is a reasonable response within the constraints of the original goalposts.

I suppose so, but who was saying this in 2014 and 2015 when the other smart watches were out and Apple's offering was only a rumour? Back then the consensus was the watch would be a watershed test of whether the team at Apple had it in them. Now that they've conclusively nailed it, we discover it didn't count after all.

Of course the expectation was that the Apple Watch should be just as popular as the iPhone and transcend the watch industry completely. Wearables would be the next utterly indispensable technology, maybe even threatening the phone itself. In comparison, 'merely' dominating the existing watch industry and gobbling large chunks of the fitness tracker market seems underwhelming.

> who was saying this in 2014 and 2015 when the other smart watches were out and Apple's offering was only a rumour?

I was and still am. As I said, most people I know don't wear a watch, myself included. It was the same in 2014 and 2015.

But it clearly isn’t a small industry, and wearables are now responsible for c$40bn annual revenue at Apple (includes AirPods now though, also invented after jobs), so dismissing it does seem to be changing the goalposts.

Except it did by creating a larger market. Some of that was flashy at the start like the gold watches but ultimately created a new market. Personally I quit wearing a watch sometime around 2010 when I found I was checking my phone and didn't need a watch. Now I am checking my watch for time and weather and not pulling my phone out.

The goalposts were with widely used computing devices this entire time, but some people want to move them next to typewriters and watches.

I hadn’t worn a watch for decades. Then Apple Watch came along and I’ve worn one every day for the last five years. I call that disruption.

Casio sells more F-91W digital watches per year than the entire Swiss watch industry, too...

Apple's watch was their usual polished refinement of existing, mainly Chinese, SIM-equipped smartwatch designs. They didn't invent a market segment out of a vacuum.

"it really didn't completely disrupt a large existing industry" - Have you checked market share of Apple Watch ?

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