Apple's first-ever wearable, Apple Watch, may be a harder sell than Apple expects, with a poll revealing 69 percent of American consumers are not interested in buying the tech giant's smartwatch.
The somewhat low number of consumers who may consider buying an Apple Watch may be a reflection of Apple's marketing effort as the poll also reveals a rather limited public awareness of Watch.
Out of the 1,245 people surveyed after Apple's Spring Forward event on March 9, only around half said they had heard of the Apple Watch, which Apple and many others expect to be the next big thing in tech.
One thing gleamed from the survey is a good majority have made up their mind about the device, even though very few have seen the watch. Only around 6 percent said they were unsure as to whether they would buy the device or not.
While 69 percent stated they are not interested in purchasing Watch, it's not all bad news for Apple. Of those surveyed 13 percent who don't own an iPhone said that they would consider buying an iPhone to pair with an Apple Watch.
The Apple Watch is largely useless to those who do not own an iPhone 5 or higher because so much information is shared between the two devices. For example, without being paired to an iPhone an Apple Watch cannot connect to the Internet or to GPS.
The sibling device connection is a strategy Apple has tapped in the past. When the iPod was first released by Apple in 2001, the company made sure it couldn't work without an Apple computer. Of course, this was later changed to allow it to work with other computer systems, however users still had to use iTunes to sync music to the portable device. Doing this allowed Apple to ensure everything worked together perfectly. It did not have to worry about what would happen with other computer systems because it did not make the device compatible with other systems.
The Apple Watch will go on sale on April 24, with pre-orders starting on April 10. The device comes in two different sizes and three different models - a "Sports" edition, the standard Apple Watch, and the "Apple Watch Edition," which is famous for costing $10,000 or more given its 18K gold aspect.
The Apple Watch is Apple's first entrance into a new product category in five years, since the launch of the iPad. Device adoption will ultimately hinges on whether or not developers take advantage of the new platform to create interesting apps.
