According to Horace Dediu, analysts trying to predict the market opportunity of the Apple Watch is going about wrong. Dediu believes that the market for Apple Watch is not the Swiss, or Chineses market but the number of wrist in the world.
Horace Dediu:
[su_quote] Measuring the existing market is a mistake because the existing products are hired for different jobs. Those measurements will yield only an answer to how big that job is.
Assessing competitiveness vs. incumbents is a mistake because incumbents have perfected solving the problems of wrist-worn timekeeping devices over a century. Apple’s watch is not a wrist-worn timekeeping device any more than the iPhone is a phone or the iPad is a pad.
Segmenting the market by whatever means are convenient today is irrelevant because the segments are currently positioned on the current jobs to be done. It’s no more relevant than classifying the iPhone along the segments defined for phones in 2007.
Some have tried to wedge the Apple Watch among the “fitness tracker” market. This is no more plausible given that fitness tracking is no more interesting than timekeeping is to Watch.
The best way to measure the opportunity is to quantify the “wrist-space-time” continuum and deciding what is and what isn’t addressable. The wrist is an interesting place to put a computer and Apple makes computers.[/su_quote]
