Today is a great day for Android Wear
In just a few hours time, Tim Cook will take the stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco to make his toughest pitch in years: the Apple Watch.
For a few months now Ive been convinced that Apples wearable doesnt have longevity to it. When Tim did his one more thing back in September I was expecting something that would mark a step-change in the wearables story, like the iPhone and iPad did for phones and tablets. Imagine my disappointment when Apple revealed that its Watch was, well, just another smartwatch.
Nonetheless I expect initial sales of the Watch will be superb, but then Apple has a different problem on its hands: how do you get people to refresh their watch more than once in a five-year window?
Its a question Ive asked myself a lot during my time using Android Wear. My latest wrist buddy, the Moto 360, is by far the most compelling of the bunch so far, but I still feel like I can go back to my regular timepiece - I could never rewind back to using a feature phone. Thats why the uptake of Googles wearable OS has been tepid, but today thats going to change.
Whether or not Im right about the longer-term prospects of the Apple Watch, its not hard to see how the Apple evangelism will lift the wearables category as a whole. Apples never called it (and probably never will call it) a smartwatch, but the Apple Watch will define the category in a way that ends up benefiting most of its competitors. Case in point: my mum still refers to every tablet as an iPad, including the Nexus 7 I bought her, and shes not the only person Ive known to do so. Even the NFL got mixed up, despite a $400 million deal with Microsoft to make the Surface tablet the "official tablet of the NFL".
If Apple does turn the smartwatch into a must-have cant-live-without device, Google and others will share the spoils. Android is hugely popular, and the exclusivity of Android Wear and Watch OS to their connected devices (although Google is looking into making Android Wear iOS-compatible, which could be a massive deal when the time comes) means plenty of people will happily buy an Android Wear device so they can jump on the bandwagon.
By charging into wearables, Apple is legitimising it in the eyes of others, which can only help to lift the category massively. Android Wear has got too comfortable; now that Apple is in the picture, it can only encourage others to up their game. So far the focus on design has been heavy, but when Apples legion of developers reveal what theyve been working on, I expect functionality will be back in the centre of the picture.
The biggest risk to Android Wear right now isnt the Apple Watch, its the fragmentation going on within its own camp. Samsung, LG and others are testing their own operating systems, only to confuse the customer who doesnt understand why their LG Watch Urbane LTE wont work with their normal Android Wear app.
Which means that, right now, Google needs to do three things: improve Android Wear, show manufactures why its the only route to travel, and be glad that Apple decided the smartwatch was worth banking on.
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