Deja vu — why Apple Watch is the iPhone all over again

Wondering what possible use an Apple Watch could be to you? You probably said the same thing about smartphones back in the day. If history manages to repeat itself, smartwatches may just be as common as smartphones in a few short years.

Roy Morgan Research (RMR) has been looking into buying intentions for Apple Watch and it seems that there is something oddly familiar about the numbers. When RMR researched smartphone technology adoption four months after the iPhone became available here, only 620,000 people (3.6%) signalled an intention to purchase. There’s now 13 million of them in Australia.

RMR conducted research in the first four months of this year, which indicated around 520,000 Australians intended to buy an Apple Watch. 38% are between 14 and 24 and 30% are 25 to 35, meaning that younger people are driving the initial uptake of the technology.

As of right before the Apple Watch launched, fewer than 240,000 Australians 14+ (1.2%) already owned a smartwatch — which is also very similar to the proportion who owned a BlackBerry right before the iPhone landed.

Tim Martin, general manager – media, Roy Morgan Research, explained the link: “We often talk about early adopters, but our technology research also tracks and identifies early intenders. Technology brands, retailers and marketers are therefore able to monitor adoption rates across different market segments, potentially predicting how wide and how fast uptake of new technologies will grow.

“Prior to the first iPhone release, only around 1 in 100 Australians owned a BlackBerry. Ahead of the Apple Watch release in April this year, a similar proportion of us had already got ourselves a smartwatch. With such similarities between the two items’ early intention rates and demographics of intenders, it looks like Apple could again be opening up a whole new market with its smartwatch — despite not being the first brand to hit shelves.

“Over the next year, we will continue to track how many Australians have bought or intend to buy a smartwatch — stay tuned!”