First, let me admit my bias. I wear a gorgeous 14k gold Swiss watch everywhere but in the water. The thought of replacing it with an Apple Watch would, for me, feel like replacing a great dinner with brightly colored and beautifully shaped nutritional tablets. Was that why Apple’s share price failed to rise following Apple Watch’s debut today?

Still, the Apple Watch may find a great market if we shake off the history of “the watch,” a noun denoting a time-telling device, and avoid viewing it as a wrist smart phone. Instead, let’s think about the new entrant as a “situational mobile solution for watching” (the verb). What are some of the situations in which an Apple Watch could provide significant customer value?

Exercise. I carry my iPhone when I run to track my miles, speed, elevations, etc. I would welcome a wrist solution for running, hiking, swimming and biking. With mapping solutions that give me more freedom to wander and concurrent analytics that would encourage me to try harder,  this consumer is ready to buy Apple Watch Sports.

Diagnosis. My mother is in an assisted care environment following a series of small strokes whose cause we have yet to identify despite many imaging and cardiovascular tests. A wrist-worn device that provided effortless, continuous monitoring could help her physicians.

Hospital monitoring. Hospital monitoring is clumsy and by its design keeps patients less mobile than their health and mood require.  Who wouldn’t want to replace cumbersome wires with a smaller, portable device?

Home-health monitoring. Many start-ups are focused on home health: tracking post-procedure data to reduce re-admissions through early alerts; collecting and providing pre-procedure information to enhance procedure success rates; managing chronic diseases like diabetes or heart failure to avoid hospital admissions. Moving these tools from a phone platform to a wearable watch would greatly enhance convenience.

Workplace safety. An Apple Watch could provide data on exposure to pollutants and poisons, location-specific safety warnings and other worker health-related warnings.

There are other situations, known (e.g., calendar reminders) and to-be-discovered. But the multitude of situations also underscores the key challenges to a “device for watching.” Can the small screen size challenge be overcome? Can a single design address all situations? In the case of smart phones, apps enable us to customize. It appears this is the case with the Apple Watch.

I am optimistic for Apple, a corporation whose value promise is to reduce frustration and add desired convenience and functionality to our lives. Just as with Apple’s iPod and iPhone, Watch enters a market where many others have made attempts and fallen short of what technology and design might enable (Google, Microsoft and Samsung as examples).

With the phone market maturing, it makes sense that Apple is moving into the next computing platform. Whereas Apple’s ambitions were huge in music and phones, being patient with narrow applications at the outset may be the right way to enter the “watching” industry.

Another emerging platform for “watching” is Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAV), mobile sensing and computing solutions that let users easily and economically see from above eye level (think drones carrying cameras, with flight paths and filming controlled through software). So claimed Chris Anderson, former Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine from ’01 to ’12 and author of The Long Tail, Free and Makers at a recent San Diego CommNexus event. As co-founder and CEO of 3D Robotics, he aims to bring the power of UAV technology to the mainstream market.

Choice of initial markets was critical to 3D Robotics’ success, as I suspect will be true for the Apple Watch. Owing to FAA regulations for commercial use of drones, private property offered the best markets for 3D Robotics products, with agriculture (the largest industry in the globe) and construction (the second largest) key targets. For example, a UAV can identify which specific locations of a farm field have a pesticide problem, allowing for spot use of pesticides, thereby reducing pesticide costs and crop loss (the latter totaling $28 billion annually in the US according to Anderson). 3D Robotic’s open-source software platform for planning, controlling and monitoring all aspects of a flight enables rapid software improvements by its community of users; 3D Robotics then monetizes the platform by selling the UAV devices to service providers.  Its 28,000-and-growing worldwide customer base is served by only 180 employees, demonstrating that 3D Robotics has made smart market choices.

Apple’s soon-to-be released Watch and 3D Robotics UAVs are two examples of the “watching” industry. Heavy equipment that senses, like GE’s airline engines, which collect and use data used to improve fuel efficiency, are other members.

What will be next?

©Plantes Company, 2014