WWDC and the Apple Watch

Mark Miller continues his excellent series of posts regarding Apple Watch. This week, he focuses on WWDC and beyond:

Apple has already taken huge steps towards growth through their 3rd-party band program, but for the product to mature, Apple needs to take some more steps. In the short-term, it needs to offer more bands itself, in more colors, more watch faces of both analog & digital varieties & with more colors, more control of complications, and an easy way to manage & reorder faces (so you don’t have to delete & re-addevery face to get them in the order you want). In the long-term, Apple Watch needs to open this up to 3rd party developers. There is simply too much diversity in the world and too many fashion trends for Apple to try to meet everyone’s style themselves.

Both Julia Mayhugh and I discuss this on this week’s podcast (stay tuned) and completely agree. The Watch may only be a few weeks old, but many of us are already hoping for more band options and Watch faces. Unlike the iPhone or the iPad, I really do believe that the more accessories that exist for the Apple Watch, the better its chances are to succeed.

Accessories play one party, though. With analog watches, the band is always complimentary to the face of the watch. If Apple wants to tout the Watch as the company’s “most personal device ever”, then it needs to allow customization in a variety of places including complications and yes, even faces. The more of that they do, the better.

In fact, not only will this help draw in more consumers, it will also open a new door for developers to create interesting and unique looks for the Watch. It’s basically a win-win for everyone, even Apple since they take a 30 percent cut.

We all want to feel unique and different. The best way to do that is to offer as many band, faces and complications as possible.