Last month, The New York Times reported that Apple was working on an iOS-based smartwatch, a claim which was later corroborated by a number of other mainstream publications like The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.
Bloomberg reported that Apple has a team of 100 product designers working on the iWatch. Bloomberg now reports that according to their source, Apple will indeed launch an iWatch in 2013. The report also points out that Apple has already filed 79 patent applications for such a device, including the one with flexible touchscreen display, which we wrote about last week.
Apple’s iWatch could come with the following features according to Bloomberg’s sources:
- Let users make calls
- See the identity of incoming callers and check map coordinates
- It would also house a pedometer for counting steps and sensors for monitoring health-related data, such as heart rates
The report goes on to add:
To accommodate the smaller screen of a watch, Apple could adapt its iOS mobile software to limit what information is sent to a wrist device, said Scott Wilson, a watch designer who developed a line of watchbands for people who wanted to use an iPod nano as a watch.
The report also points out that an iWatch will be a lot more profitable product for Apple than the rumored television set as the gross margins for TVs is a lot lesser than the margins on watches.
As we’ve mentioned earlier, a smart watch obviously has a lot of potential for integration with Apple’s pretty strong iOS and Mac ecosystem. Siri, Passbook, Bluetooth 4.0, iMessage, Notification Center, all are possible avenues for making the Apple ecosystem even stronger. There is definitely demand for Bluetooth enabled smart watches that connect to smartphones like the iPhone based on the success of Pebble – e-paper watch, which raised over $10 million on Kickstarter.
I’ll be definitely standing in line to get one. What about you?
Via: Bloomberg
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