AFR Magazine spoke to Marc Newson, an Apple designer who worked with Jony Ive to create the Apple Watch. Newson works in London but comes from Australia. He has worked for clients including Qantas Airways, Mont Blanc and Louis Vuitton and is now hired by Apple as a designer of “special projects.”
Newson told AFR that the Apple Watch has been “enormously successful however you gauge it” and that it is unrealistic to expect every iPhone user to go out and buy one straight away. Apple hasn’t released exact sales figures for the wearable but current estimates put the number at around 7 million.
Newson described it as “the beginning of something”, criticising the “impatient” analysts who expected Apple Watch to be an overnight hit. He said: “Look at the iPhone: it was a game-changing thing. And I believe that this product – for many, many reasons people are not aware of because they haven’t thought ahead or they just don’t know – will become a similarly game-changing thing. In five years’ time I have absolutely no doubt this will be right up there.”
The designer said Apple’s product creation process is “uncompromising” but frustrating because it’s based around principles “impossible to apply in the rest of the world.” He now spends around 60 percent of his time working for Apple in a demanding role that involves regular flights to the company’s Cupertino headquarters.
Apple now includes the Apple Watch in the ‘Other Products’ category on its financial results, lumping it in with iPods, Apple TV and Beats accessories. The category grew 49 percent to $3.6 billion in the last quarter. The company has claimed the Apple Watch has sold more strongly since launch than the iPhone and iPad did after their respective first releases but sales are still a drop in the ocean when compared with the vast pool of millions of iPhone owners.
Recently, Apple updated the Watch’s software to WatchOS2. It brings several key improvements including the ability to run apps directly on the device, significantly increasing speed and responsiveness by eliminating the need to load an app over Bluetooth at launch.
The company is now widely expected to unveil a more rounded successor device next year, the Apple Watch 2. Details are currently scant but it is thought to feature further improved performance and a thinner, less bulky design.
