Apple is getting desperate to give customers a reason to buy the Apple Watch (AAPL)
Apple
The Apple Watch hasn't exactly been a flop, but it hasn't been the Next Big Thing product that Cupertino needed after the iPhone became a dominant profit driver.
The company now seems conflicted about the Watch's future.
On one hand, it's angling to keep the device ensconced in the luxury realm, through collaborations with Hermès, a French luxury goods purveyor.
On the other hand, it's presenting the Watch as more of a lifestyle enhancer. In fact, Apple CEO Tim Cook looks to be the main spokesperson for this potential rebranding of the device.
"[T]he holy grail of the watch is being able to monitor more and more of what's going on in the body," Cook said recently in Amsterdam, as Business Insider's Kif Leswing reported.
This raises the obvious question of whether 24/7 body monitoring is what people want — or even need.
Apple
I'm at an age where I have to do bit more body monitoring then when I was in my twenties, but I certainly don't need to pay much attention to the minutia of my metabolism.
If I don't feel good, I don't feel good and I might need to take it easy. If I need to have some blood tests, I go to the doctor and get checked out. If I pull a muscle, I know it. Nothing much needs to happen in real time.
Cook is perhaps thinking that Apple Watch wearers will want to monitor their threats of disease. But that monitoring will be fairly superficial, and without a medical professional to interpret the data, potentially misleading.
Some fitness obsessives may go for this, but unless Apple can prove that everyone needs to more closely monitor their vital signs, his statement indicates that the Watch-as-health-monitor is less holy grail than hail Mary.
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