Apple’s iWatch is something that has been rumoured for as long as the dedicated Apple TV set – ok, probably not as long as that, but a pretty long time. Samsung pipped Apple to market with their Galaxy Gear smartwatch, but the execution left room for improvement. Tim Cook has said that iPod sales are declining and it is a dead product, and that Apple are developing new products which don’t currently fall into any category they sell in. All-in-all meaning it seems an iWatch must be on the horizon?
A lot of leaks have surfaced which suggests that the as of yet unreleased iWatch will focus primarily on health and fitness tracking, and whilst we’ve seen numerous concepts as to how Apple might design it, the physical design is still unknown.
Apple iWatch Hires
To add more evidence to the suspicion an iWatch could be only months away is the whole list of people Apple have hired. They are all considered experts in their particular field and have a history of working on features or technology which could prove very useful in a smartwatch.
– Kevin Lynch: former Adobe CTO, directing Apple’s software engineering group for wearable products
– Jay Blahnik: worked with Nike on the FuelBand, renowned fitness expert
– Roy Raymann: former Philips scientist, sleep and activity monitoring expert
– Paul Deneve: former Yves Saint Laurent CEO, fashion expert with experience in selling high-end goods
– Angela Ahrendts: former Burberry CEO, joining Apple as SVP of retail this spring
– Ben Shaffer: former Studio Director of Nike’s R/D program, also worked on the FuelBand
– Ueyn Block: former director of engineering at C8 MediSensor, medical device expert, scientist
– Nancy Dougherty: hardware engineer for Sano Intelligence, medical device expert
– Todd Whitehurst: worked at Senseonics as VP of hardware engineering, oversaw wearable project
– Michael O’Reilly: former chief medical officer for Masimo, doctor, medical device expert
– Ravi Narashamian: former engineer in R&D at Vital Connect, Inc., expert in biosensors
Going through so much effort to pull a team of this caliber together has to mean something special is being worked on at Apple, and I’m pretty sure alot of people are expecting it to be the iWatch.
What do you think? Will we see the iWatch in the next few months?