Apple's next big thing? Maybe the iWatch

Enlarge Image

At least 100 Apple employees are rumoured to be working on the mythical iWatch. (HANDOUT ILLUSTRATION)

WITH Apple's stock hobbling and questions lingering about its ability to innovate in the post-Steve Jobs era, investors and fans are latching on to hopes the tech giant's next big thing will be the iWatch.

While little is known of the mythical gadget that has recently become the hottest topic of Silicon Valley's rumour mill, boosters envision a device that would let users read emails, Facebook notifications or caller ID by simply glancing down at their wrists.

The smart watch, connected wirelessly to the iPhone, would tap the power of the voice assistant Siri to control music, dictate messages or get directions. Forget the wallet? Just swipe the watch near a scanner to make a payment. And as you jog home later, the kinetic energy of your movement would keep the battery charged while the watch measures your heart rate and the distance covered.

"It would transform the whole smartphone business and the whole watch business at the same time," said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst for consumer research firm NPD Group. "And for the better."

It would do all this and more. If it exists.

For despite all the speculation about Apple's plans, nobody really knows what features it might include and when Apple might release it.

And yet, this being Apple, such a watch, imagined or real, already faces monstrously high expectations. For Apple, there's a big risk releasing a watch that fails to dazzle, or that falls short of the iFantasyWatch people have in their heads. Anything less than perfection could hurt its reputation for innovation and raise fresh questions about the company's ability to develop products without its late co-founder Jobs.

Veterans of the smart-watch game caution current technology severely limits the features such a watch could offer, not to mention the difficulty of getting a complex mix of specs just right.

"Apple brings a lot of cachet to the conversation, but success in this category will be about cool design as much as technology," said Bill Geiser, chief executive of Meta Watch, who has been working on smart watches for more than a decade. "You have a very small space for the device that is largely constrained. The design of any smart watch is driven by anatomy, and it's driven by fashion and it's driven by battery life."

There is no question Apple is looking seriously at wearable computing, and most likely something for the wrist. In recent weeks, several news outlets, including Bloomberg, have cited sources indicating that such a product is on its way. The financial news agency reported that at least 100 employees are working on a watch.

As is typical, Apple has declined to discuss any plans for future products. In the past decade, the company has filed applications and received numerous patents for technologies related to watch-like devices, including at least 79 that mention the word "wrist," according to Bloomberg.

In late February, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office revealed a patent application from Apple for a wearable computer in the form of a flexible bracelet that wraps around the wrist. According to the filing, that gadget would include a multi-touch display that would enable the user to "accomplish a number of different tasks including adjusting the order of a current playlist, or reviewing a list of recent phone calls. A response to a current text message can even be managed given a simple virtual keyboard configuration across the face of the flexible display."

Another patent, filed by Apple in 2009 and awarded in February, describes a "personal items network, and associated methods." The patent outlines what Apple calls "movement" or "event monitoring devices" (MMD or EMD) that include sensors and transmitters and an accelerometer to record things like heart rate, pulse, stress, outside temperature or other environmental conditions. The patent includes a drawing of one such device taped to a person's wrist.

Putting this all together, an Apple smart watch could combine some aspects of a phone but also health monitoring devices such as Nike Inc.'s FuelBand. And there are plenty of folks who are convinced such a device represents a massive opportunity not just for Apple, but also for numerous competitors.

"The combination of technologies naturally opens up the opportunity for a body area network to become a reality," said Geiser, whose firm sells watches that work with both Apple and Android phones. "And the wrist is beachfront property."

That was the case with tablet computing. Analysts have noted the company was looking at tablets as far back as 2004, but under Jobs, Apple decided to put them aside, believing the cost and power of the components were not right, wireless networks were not robust enough and consumers might not be ready for touch-screen computing.

That patience paid off when the company finally unveiled the iPad in 2010, not just the right product, but also at the right time.

-- Los Angeles Times

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 23, 2013 B9