With yesterday’s announcement of the Apple Watch, Apple has launched its bid to do for wearable tech what the iPhone did for mobile phones. This raises two immediate questions. Will the Apple Watch help attract more advertisers to mobile platforms? And what will it do to Apple’s position in the ever more competitive smartphone market?
I think the answer to the first question is a clear ‘Yes’. Wearable tech creates new mobile data points which can be leveraged by advertisers (assuming privacy compliance). According to HealthGuidance the Apple wearable tech data will be of particular interest to advertisers who want to segment and target people based on health/fitness and location. The obvious candidates for this would be sportswear manufacturers and insurance providers.
As for its position in the market, Apple is playing catch-up here with Samsung, which has had its wearable ‘gear’ products in the market for some time. What is going to create the point of difference is the scale at which Apple can deliver mobile payments. With NFC integration, Touch ID security, and a link to 800 million credit cards, it looks like Apple will be the catalyst for theadoption of mobile payments on a global scale. This also makes Apple a very interesting ad platform now to those advertisers who are struggling to track all the way from ad to sale.
Related link: http://mandmglobal.com/news/10-09-14/global-media-industry-greets-apple-watch-laun.aspx
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