Apple as soon as deliberate to supply Android help for its Apple Watch. Nevertheless, it finally scrapped the thought as a consequence of fears that it’d negatively have an effect on gross sales of its iPhone, based on a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
“The transfer, codenamed Mission Fennel, would have introduced the corporate’s well being options — and the well being advantages Apple has repeatedly underlined — to many extra individuals, particularly in international locations the place Apple has little market share,” says Mark Gurman.
Regardless that Mission Fennel was near completion, Gurman says Apple killed the challenge because of the Apple Watch’s “halo impact” being a driver of iPhone gross sales. The 2 units are carefully associated in Apple clients’ minds.
The “halo impact” is when clients develop optimistic impressions of an organization, model, or product as a consequence of a pleasing product expertise. This leads clients to purchase extra merchandise from the corporate.
This pattern goes again a number of years at Apple, stretching again to the times of the unique iPod in 2001. When the unique iPod first hit cabinets, it required consumers to have a Mac pc geared up with Firewire to load music onto the system. The iPod did trigger Mac gross sales to rise throughout that first yr.
Whereas there have been loads of Home windows PC-compatible MP3 gamers accessible on the time, Home windows customers begged for the system to be PC-compatible.
A bit lower than a yr after the iPod’s debut, Apple added Home windows help through USB. (I converse from expertise, as I purchased an iPod as soon as it grew to become Home windows suitable, and the optimistic expertise I had with the iPod led me to purchase a MacBook a yr or so later.)
The halo impact struck once more with the discharge of the iPhone in 2007, as shoppers’ optimistic expertise with the unique iPhone led to their buy of different Apple merchandise.
Now, 16 years later, the iPhone stays Apple’s top-selling {hardware} platform, a minimum of partially as a consequence of its shut connection to the Apple Watch. The Apple Watch dominates smartwatch gross sales, outselling different smartwatch manufacturers and taking the lion’s share of smartwatch gross sales and income. Apple Watch gross sales accounted for $41.1 billion in income in 2022.
This doesn’t mark the primary report of Apple scrapping an Android-related challenge. Apple additionally dropped plans for porting iMessage and FaceTime over to the Android platform. Regardless that Apple CEO Steve Jobs as soon as introduced Apple would publish each companies as open business requirements, these plans didn’t pan out.
In an inner Apple dialogue revealed throughout Apple’s courtroom battle with Epic Video games, Apple VP Craig Federighi warned the opposite executives within the dialogue that porting iMessage to Android “would merely serve to take away an impediment to iPhone households giving their children Android telephones.”
Many analysts count on to see a year-over-year gross sales decline for the Apple Watch, as a consequence of slowing cargo momentum.
Apple reported its newest quarterly earnings this week, throughout which CFO Luca Maestri commented that income for Wearables, House and Equipment was $9.3 billion, down 3% yr over yr. The Apple Watch is included on this class, which additionally contains the AirPods, Apple TV, and HomePod, amongst different issues. Apple doesn’t break down the gross sales numbers for particular person objects.
Maestri additionally famous that almost two-thirds of shoppers buying an Apple Watch through the fiscal fourth quarter have been new consumers and buyer satisfaction for the wearable measured at 97% in america.