Apple Watch, the other chicken with golden eggs

It is a very small object, about 4 centimeters out of 4 and less than 40 grams.But it weighs more and more heavily in the accounts of the largest tech company in the world, which published last week of breathtaking results, with a quarterly turnover for the first time greater than 100 billion dollars.The Apple Watch was launched as a fashion object, even luxury, but it was especially through sport, then by health, that it arrived at the wrist of millions of users.Unveiled in 2014, three years after the disappearance of Steve Jobs - who, for the anecdote, did not wear a watch -, she alone sums up the new priorities of Apple: connected objects, services and, above all, thehealth.

Apple does not provide sales figures (1), but according to estimates from the IDC firm, more than 26 million units were marketed in 2019 - including just over 1 million in France.For another cabinet, Wedbush Securities, the 40 million copies mark would have been crossed in 2020. Enough to dominate not only the market for connected watches, but also that of watches at all: for two years, Apple has been having been moreUnits that the entire Swiss watch industry, which produces depending on the year between 20 and 25 million watches."In less than seven years, Apple has become the world number 1 on a market from which it was completely absent," summarizes Daniel Ives, analyst and operational director of Wedbush Securities.

Always more sensors

The apple firm does not intend to stick to it.In an exclusive interview "Echos Weekend", Jeff Williams, the Chief Operating Officer (Operational Director) of Apple, explains in the tone of the joke that, for him, everyone should wear one.Right arm of the CEO, Tim Cook, who held the same position with Jobs, Jeff Williams knows the product by heart: it was he who, alongside Jony Ive, legendary group leader of the group, directed the Apple Watch projectbefore his arrival on the market.“The initial vision, if you summarize it in a sentence, was just to help people spend a better day.»»

An increasingly filled day: in six years and as many versions, the Apple watch has continued to integrate new functions and new sensors.Initially the additional tool of the iPhone, to discreetly read SMS or respond to a call, it has enriched a GPS and a chip for contactless payment (2016), a virtual SIM card forOperating far from the phone (2017), a Talkie-Walkie (2018), a compass (2019) and even an altimeter (2020).It is in sport and health that his progress has been the most notable - to the point that some doctors are starting to advise her to their patients.We would almost forget that she gives the time ...

The history of Apple Watch is first of all that of a late departure.Despite its pioneering image, the group co -founded by Steve Jobs took its time to arrive on the niche of connected watches.Without going up to James Bond films or a remote control quartz watch from the "K2000" series, the first "intelligent" watches, signed IBM or Sony, appeared in the late 1990s.

From 2004, Microsoft technology, Spot ("Smart Personal Object Technology"), equipped Tissot, Suunto and even Swatch watches.The screen was in black and white, the functions very limited (short messages, scholarships, weather, etc.), and the product has never managed to seduce consumers.It must be said that these discovered shortly after the ultimate in connectivity: the touch screen smartphone, and in particular the iPhone, released in 2007. Microsoft watches disappeared the following year ...

Read also:

With its new Watch, Apple invites itself into the health market

Who is the Apple Watch buyer?

Originally late

The interest is reborn in 2012, first around a start-up, Pebble, which designs its watch as a supplement to the smartphone, and managed to raise $ 10 million on the Kickstarter financing platform.In a few months, the big names in tech follow suit: the CES of Las Vegas, in January 2014, has the appearance of a watchmaking lounge.Samsung, Sony, LG and even the French Archos: everyone goes from their model.In the process, Google offers an operating system for watches, Android Wear.

True to his cult of secrecy, Apple then reveals nothing of its intentions, without preventing rumors from circulating.In February 2013, the "New York Times" wrote that it is working on "curved glass bracelets" which could foreshadow a watch.False track or fantasy, the curved screen bracelet will never see the light of day, but the author is right on one point: at Apple headquarters, research on a watch is already launched.They started in early 2012, a few months after the death of Steve Jobs, in the Jony IVE design team.In an interview with the Hodinkee luxury watchmaking site published in 2018, the designer indicated that he never talked about watches with the founder of Apple."I don't remember having ever seen it," added the designer.

After the computer, the phone and the tablet, this object was however established as the next step on the miniaturization route.Apple designers first started by exploring different objects that can be worn."One of the fundamental questions was: would a screen small enough to be worn would be too limited?Remember Jeff Williams.For several months, designers tried different prototypes of screens and interfaces, until you reach the perfect size to display enough information."It was a kind of Eurêka moment, when the team said that we could really get a product from it.»»

Call to classic watchmaking

At this stage, designers do not clearly know what the object could be used for."In general, when we design new Apple products, the starting point is to ask ourselves: is there a product that we want for ourselves?Then we unroll the wire, explains Jeff Williams.We do not try to dissect the market by thinking of such or such age group or type of user.»»

During this process, which will last more than two years, the small team around Jony Ive and Alan Dye, head of human-machine interactions at Apple, is aimed at conventional watchmaking experts, such as Dominique Fléchon, former historian of the Swiss group Richemont.Australian star designer Marc Newson, friend of Jony Ive, also works on the project - the Apple Watch "sport" bracelet is directly inspired by the Hemipode, a watch designed by Newson fifteen years ago (2).

"One More Thing"

"The project has evolved over time," explains Jeff Williams.We have explored different tracks.We knew that it would be worn permanently, and that it would be the most personal object ever created by Apple.This led us to think about its design, the possibility of changing bracelets, because we wanted to offer our customers the opportunity to personalize it.The health aspect is also taken into account: at the time, activity trackers signed Fitbit or Jawbone, which count the number of steps, take more and more followers.“We have started to think about the sensors we could integrate, and how we could encourage users to be more active.»»

The first presentation of the Apple Watch by Tim Cook

On September 9, 2014, when Tim Cook presents the watch for the first time on the scene of the Flint Center for the Performing Arts, in Cupertino, the crowd is with angels.The place is charged with symbols: it was there, thirty years earlier, that Steve Jobs unveiled the legendosh.Tim Cook inspires it and makes the suspense play, by presenting the Apple Watch until after an hour, while a cult formula of Jobs, "One More Thing", appears on the screengiant.“We have worked incredibly hard on a completely new product, ignites the CEO.Here is the new chapter in Apple's story!»»

A solid gold version

If the keynote started with the presentation of the iPhone 6, and ended with a live piece of U2, no doubt possible: the real star is the watch, which will arrive in store eight months later, inApril 2015. Beyond its connection possibilities, the Apple Watch is first positioned as a fashion object, or even luxury.The basic model, in steel, is sold 399 euros, but a special "Edition" version, in solid gold, is in the catalog, for a price up to 18,000 euros - we will see it on the wrist of Karl Lagerfeld or Beyoncé.No doubt too bling-bling, it disappears a year later, but another luxury version, in collaboration with Hermès, is always available.

The Apple Watch form and health dimension is also highlighted from the most soberly, especially through a “sport” model in aluminum.Over the years, the role of "intelligent guardian of your health", to use a formula by Jeff Williams, will continue to gain importance."When the connected watches arrived, all the actors, including Apple, did not have a precise view of what consumers wanted, because it was a completely new category," recalls Francisco Jeronimo, analyst and vice-president associatedAt IDC.At the same time, activity trackers were more and more successful, but many people put them in a drawer after a few months of use.Apple has managed to combine both, adding health to it, so that the product has a high value proposition in consumers.»»

Seduced cardiologists

In terms of health, the most spectacular innovation comes in 2018: the fourth version is capable of performing an electrocardiogram (ECG) and detecting a heart rate disorder, atrial fibrillation.In both cases, the technologies were approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the American Agency for Medicines.Unheard of for a consumer technological product.

Skeptical at the start, health professionals, especially cardiologists, will be more and more interested in the watch, and even to advise it to some of their patients."On the technical level it is perfectly successful, and in terms of concept is an excellent idea, because the watch is an object that one can always have on yourself," says Professor Jean-Claude Deharo, chefService at the Timone Hospital, in Marseille, and member of the Bureau of the French Cardiology Society.Many patients complain of heart symptoms in everyday life, and it is very difficult to obtain a tracked layout in symptoms.From now on, it is enough to tell the patient to wear the watch, and to trigger the layout when he has the symptoms.»»

The ECG obtained with the watch is less complete than that obtained in the cardiology department of a hospital (the analysis relates to a single derivation instead of 12), but it is "largely sufficient to document an anomaly",Cons up Professor Antoine Leenhardt, cardiologist in charge of rhythmology unit at Bichat hospital, for whom "the main advantage of the watch is that the patient permanently.»»

"Saved" by their watch

Atrial fibrillation being responsible for 20 to 25 % of cerebral vascular accidents, early detection is particularly useful.In some cases, it can even save lives.According to Sumbul Desai, Apple’s health vice-president, it is the testimonies of customers "saved" by their watch that prompted the group to go further in the medical aspect."At the start, the pulse measure used above all to more precisely calculate the calories spent," said this training doctor, hired by Apple in 2017 after having directed the Stanford University Center for Digital Health.And we started to receive messages from people who told us that their watch had detected changes in heart rate, that they had spoken to their doctor, and that in some cases it had made it possible to discover this or that problem.»»

Jeff Williams remembers that the first letter of this kind had been welcomed with a certain skepticism.“We thought it was just someone who was trying to be known.It took us a while to understand that passive surveillance of health was something very powerful.This is where we started to add functions such as notification in the event of cardiac arrhythmia, ECG, falling detection, etc.»»

Digital medical file

For Eric Carreel, founder and CEO of Withings, French specialist in connected health objects, this approach "constitutes the next step in medicine".At the same time Apple supplier, which sells its scales, tensiometers and thermometers in its shops, and partly competitor, Car withings also designs watches for activity monitoring (including with ECG function), the entrepreneur shares theSame vision: “Obtain data in quantity, in daily life, creates a new element.The idea is not only companies like Apple or Withings replace the medical profession, but whether one is at its service.»»

If the Apple Watch has become the emblem of this strategy, Tim Cook and its teams did not wait for its launch to take an interest in the health of their customers.As early as 2014, a first application, health, was preinstalled in the iPhone, to measure the number of steps or follow the quality of sleep.She has since evolved to become a real digital medical file, which the user can share with his doctor or insurer - at least in the United States.

Jeff Williams remembers that it was by developing the watch that this idea was born: "We knew that we were going to follow calories and activity, and we thought that we had to be able to store this data on the phone,as well as other information from other health devices, in a secure manner.»»

COVID detection under study

Next step: get closer to medical research.From November 2017 to August 2018, Apple launched a vast study on cardiac arrhythmia with Stanford University.More than 400,000 volunteers, all owners of an Apple Watch, participated."Our motivation was to understand how research works," explains Sumbul Desai.We do not want to put technologies in nature and let doctors or academics manage to see what they can be used for.We want to learn, and based on the facts, which they bring to patients, but also to doctors and to the health system.»»

Since then, three other large -scale studies have been launched in partnership with other medical institutions.One fourth, announced in the fall of 2020, will use the latest generation of watches to see if data on heart rate and blood oxygen can help detect pre-couting signs of acute respiratory infections, such as flu orCOVID-19.

In another genre, Apple has made an agreement in September with the Singapore government to encourage residents of Île-etat to take charge of their health using Apple Watch: an application, Lumihealth, encourages them to move more, to eat better or to go for a medical check-up.If they follow this program, scheduled to last two years, they can receive up to $ 380 award.

Health, a gigantic market

Now Apple no longer hides its immense ambitions in terms of health.In January 2019, in an interview with CNBC, Tim Cook said that it could be "Apple's most important contribution to humanity": "We give the individual the power to manage their health.And we are only at the beginning of this process.»»

Tim Bajarin, analyst for the high-tech industry in the Californian Creative Strategies, which has followed Apple since the mid-1980s, also sees it as a form of inheritance by Steve Jobs, disappeared in 2011 after a long battle against cancer:“Jobs' disease has marked Apple executives a lot, especially Tim Cook, who was very close to him.I believe that the roots of the Apple Watch come from there: use the technology to honor Steve Jobs memory, and to contribute to the good health of people.»»

More prosaically, medicine is also a gigantic market, constantly increasing and still weakly affected by digital technologies.In 2019, even before the coronavirus crisis, health spending in the United States amounted to $ 3.800 billion, or almost 18 % of GDP."Health is, depending on the country, the first or second largest sector in the economy, said Tim Cook in 2017 at" Fortune ".I sincerely think that it is a very big section of activity to explore for the future of Apple.»»

Very sensitive data

The other GAFA are also interested in it.Amazon started distributing medicines, and has just offered his assistance to the Biden administration for vaccination.Google, after a first failure ten years ago, multiplies initiatives again.

With Fitbit, Google returns to the attack

Will a large check are enough to catch up with the advance taken by Apple?It is Google's bet, which has just spent $ 2.1 billion to acquire Fitbit, pioneer of activity sensors.Its flagship model, the Sense watch, is a direct competitor of the Apple Watch."Today, and we see it in all GAFAs, you have to be in a product-service triptych," analyzes Eric Carreel, CEO of Withings.Well established in smartphones (with Android) and the house (Home speakers, Nest Thermostats), Google had a difficult start in health - its digital medical file service, launched in 2008, had closed after five years.Data from Fitbit products could notably be used to cause Google Health's algorithms, which in 2018 absorbed Deepmind's health division, its London laboratory of artificial intelligence.

But the Cupertino firm has a competitive advantage: a much better image in terms of personal data protection."It's a chance and it's an asset, but it's not a novelty: respecting privacy is just the way we work," says Sumbul Desai.We do not collect the data, we do not have a cloud where we process and withdraw it. ”

No question, however, and even if health has become strategic, to reduce the watch to this field."We never said to ourselves: after the iPhone and the iPad, our next market must be health," defends Jeff Williams.People buy the watch for all kinds of reasons: to be in contact with their loved ones, to measure their physical activity ... If we had tried to sell a device to monitor heartbeat, we would have sold only one handle!»»

(1) In Apple's results, watches are counted with speakers, headphones and accessories.In the first quarter of the 2020-2021 offbeat financial year, this set reached $ 12.97 billion, up some 30 %.For comparison, over the same period, iPhone sales reached $ 65.6 billion.

(2) In 2019, Jony Ive and Marc Newson left Apple to found their design studio, Lovefrom.

A fitness course on the wrist

It is the latest of the services offered on Apple subscription, after music, video streaming and the press. Fitness +, launched on December 14 in the United States and in English-speaking countries, is the modern version of aerobic courses on TV in the 1980s. Gym, bodybuilding, dance, yoga or bikes sessions 'Apartment, accessible on demand, in the form of videos of 5 to 45 minutes, for $ 9.99 per month. The formula is very similar to the peloton lessons, an American manufacturer of bikes and connected racing carpets. The difference ? "We are talking to a widest possible audience," explains Jay Blahnik, director of fitness technologies for Apple. It goes from beginners who do very little or no sport, to the athletes accomplished, who love it and who want to improve their performance, and perhaps run their first marathon. The videos are displayed on an iPhone, an iPad or an Apple TV, a recent Apple Watch is essential to register. The famous Apple ecosystem logic ...