Above Avalon: Apple Watch Momentum Is Building

After years of deep skepticism and cynicism, consensus reaction towards Apple Watch has changed and is now positive. Much of this is due to the fact that it’s impossible to miss Apple Watches appearing on wrists around the world. According to my estimates, approximately 35% of iPhone users in the U.S. now wear an Apple Watch. This is a shockingly high percentage for a five-year-old product category, and it says a lot about how Apple’s intuition about the wrist was right.

I have to say, this is a joy to me. I’ve been writing about how much I love smart watches since the original Pebble adorned my wrist 6-7 years ago. Then Apple blew away the competition with the Apple Watch, and I jumped on board immediately. There of course was still criticism, and that was fair, but I still believed in the product. It seemed every few weeks there was a new “I’m ditching the Apple Watch” blog post or a “Company X just killed their Watch app, is the Apple Watch over?” headline, all of which gave an impression that the Apple Watch was a fad at best, and a flat out mistake at worst. This was my first time seeing that an estimated 35% of iPhone owners wear an Apple Watch, and frankly that’s stunning.

I’m simply posting this because it makes me happy to see my pet product has succeeded at such a dramatic scale.