A lot has been written about the Apple Watch. A lot will continue to be written about the Apple Watch. Apple has positioned it as their most personal product yet. Personal tastes are often subjective and sometimes polarizing. Polarizing would certainly characterize the tone of much of the public commentary thus far. While the Apple Watch may be Apple’s most individual product, within the tech media it is certainly the most studied. From our own research, I had long questioned whether the heavy scrutiny by many in the tech elite was representative of the true mass market sentiment toward the Apple Watch. This was what the folks at Wristly and I set out to discover.
Profile of the Research Panel
As a researcher, one of the things critical to understand is the profile of the people you are surveying. With the Wristly Apple Watch Owner Network, we have over a thousand people on our panel. The belief, by many, was this first wave of Apple Watch buyers would skew toward early adopters. When we asked some pre-qualification questions to help us profile the panel, we found a healthy range of consumer profiles were represented.
By our profiling questions, we found 34% of Apple Watch buyers were what we profiled as tech insiders. These were folks who very closely aligned with early adopter behavior. To our surprise, 53% were what we call “enthusiastic” users. These are folks who don’t work in the tech industry, don’t even consider themselves “techies,” and more closely resemble traits of the mainstream consumer market. ((Note on Methodology: We asked a series of profiling questions to help us spot those with early adopter or more mainstream non-tech user traits. Things like first iPhone owned, current iPhone owned, timing of watch purchase, etc. Then we created the profiles of Tech insider and Non-tech user based on the screening questions.))
Customer Satisfaction
One of the best ways to measure how a product is being received by its owners is customer satisfaction. This statistic alone is highlighted by Apple continually as the barometer in which they measure a product’s success. Many pundits will look to Apple Watch sales as the metric for its success. But the real question is, do people love it? The answer is yes.
It is common practice to add the top two boxes, which demonstrate satisfaction with the product, in customer satisfaction ratings. When doing so, we arrive at a 97% customer satisfaction level for the Apple Watch. For even more perspective, if we take a look at how the Apple Watch customer satisfaction rating compares to the first generation of the iPad and the iPhone, we see the Apple Watch has the highest customer satisfaction rating of any previous version one Apple product. Given the current customer satisfaction of the iPhone is at 99%, the first version of the Apple Watch ranks closer to the current generation iPhone than the first generation iPhone or iPad in terms of satisfaction.
This begs an interesting question. Why does the Apple Watch have a higher customer satisfaction rating than the iPad or iPhone this early on in the product’s life cycle? Luckily, we have some observations and data to tell the story.
Early Adopters vs. Average Consumers
I’m going to share with you what may be the most insightful thing I have learned to date about how different customers on the adoption cycle spectrum think about technology. What has been fascinating about the Wristly Apple Watch Panel is how diverse it is across the adoption cycle spectrum. We have those on the bleeding edge of adoption all the way through mainstream consumers who aren’t buying it for the sake of Apple fanaticism or love of tech and gadgetry but because they saw the utility and usefulness of the product right off the bat. They are all represented in our panel. I’m not sure any other product, from early PCs, smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, etc., this early in their category life cycle would have given us the opportunity to survey and talk to consumers with such a wide spectrum of the adoption cycle represented.
In many of our surveys related to questions on the Apple Watch — apps they use, likes and dislikes, willingness to promote or recommend the product to another person, etc. — I was reading through answers and began to observe something. There was quite the range of answers, particularly around a willingness to recommend the Apple Watch. We started seeing a common theme of answers that went something like this: “I like the Watch, but I’m not sure my friends will yet as it isn’t ready for the mainstream.” Or, “I’m an early adopter and I know I like these types of products out of the gate but I’m not sure my friends will.” But then we also started seeing answers like “I don’t see why everyone can’t get value out of this product.” Or, “I love it and can’t stop telling everyone how much I love it.”
Around this same time, I was conducting man on the street interviews everywhere I saw people with an Apple Watch. I’d just ask them what they thought of the product. I’d often make sure my watch was hidden in the hopes they would treat me as someone genuinely interested in the product and looking for a recommendation on whether to buy it or not. I also interviewed, on the phone in many different locations, a handful of volunteers from the Wristly panel. What I discovered was quite fascinating.
As I listened to 14 different people tell me about their Apple Watch, I observed a pattern. Those whose job it was to think about the Apple Watch or who were early adopters who thought deeply about tech and the tech products they buy, were all much more critical of the watch. You could tell they evaluated it and thought about it deeply from every angle by their responses. Then I talked with teachers, firefighters, insurance agents, and those not in the tech industry and not hard-core techies. These groups of people couldn’t stop raving about the Apple Watch and how much they loved the product. It was almost as if the farther away people were from tech or the tech industry, the more they liked the Apple Watch.
As we filtered the customer satisfaction answers by profile we saw something that fit this observation. While every profile ranked high in one of the two top satisfaction responses, it was the non-tech users who ranked the highest for “very satisfied/delighted” by the Apple Watch.
While we don’t know exactly how many Apple Watches have been sold what we can measure and use as a barometer to judge the success or failure of Apple Watch is if current owners are happy, satisfied, and delighted. For that we can safely conclude the answer is a resounding yes.
For the full Apple Watch customer satisfaction report, you can download it here from Wristly. Also please join our Apple Watch panel if you haven’t already for insights and full reports.
Do you have any plans to get this in the hands of main stream media? Just this weekend two more negative Watch stories were published – one from the New York Times about app developers not rushing to develop for the platform and one from the Financial Times quoting a couple people who returned their Watches.
Yes already sent it to folks at the WSJ and I’m talking to the NYT about it as well today. Plan to talk to Tim at the Financial Times as well. Hopefully others will find it at as well 🙂
Thanks. Not sure why Tim Bradshaw is jumping on the negativity bandwagon. I never thought of the Financial Times as being about page views.
FT is up for sale, like it or not, page views help to goose the price.
Too bad the conclusion of the report is not negative. Or else it would have got picked up already 😉
Ben – you’ll be pleased to hear that Time have run the story on their online site, as has Forbes and Fortune.
I personally don’t think that “Somewhat Satisfied” should be included in the overall satisfaction. 97% satisfaction makes it sound like everyone loves it, whereas someone who falls in the “somewhat satisfied” category could very likely decide not to ever buy another Apple Watch.
That’s pretty standard customer satisfaction terminology. Identical to the ones change wave uses which are the customer sat reprots levels everyone cites.
“Somewhat Satisfied” is a positive indicator. It is neither neutral (“Neither Satisfied nor Dissatisfied”) nor is it negative (“Somewhat Dissatisfied”).
Both levels of satisfaction are grouped together, as they also provide the satisfaction rating for the other products mentioned.
encourage you to read the full Wristly report as well. Some good other stats in there.. like 73% believe the price they paid was a good value and worth the cost for example. Another good indicator.
Thanks for verifying what I have been saying for awhile. I got my girlfriend and myself Apple Watches. She has loved hers from day one. I have been more in like rather than in love but my affection is growing. I notice how slow third party apps are. She doesn’t bother with any third party apps. It was immediately clear that we were viewing Apple Watch differently.
I think techies get Apple Watch and look for an experience like the day they got their first iPad. They look to kill the evening playing with their new toy. However, once set up, there is little to do so they get disappointed. My girlfriend, representing the non-techie side, put her Apple Watch on and went about her business. She immediately loved the way it reduced the time playing on techie devices i.e. her iPhone. I found myself looking for the Watch to be a play-toy that entertained. She immediately looked at it as a tool that helped manage her interactions with her phone. As I have spent more time with the watch I have been coming around to her view.
For what it’s worth, here in Seattle, I’ve talked to about 15 Apple Watch owners whom I have noticed “on the street”, or in stores, or at a museum. (I rather go out of my way to just stop and ask folks since my partner and I are enjoying our Watches, and I’m the curious type. When you are old like me, you can get away with this, lol. Also, I’m rather surprised to encounter so many Watches around, based on some of the recent tech stories I’ve read lately.) Everyone I’ve spoken with has reported satisfaction and usually said so enthusiastically.
I didn’t yet read the Wristly report, but I am curious as to how the respondents were actually verified as AW owners. (It would have been great if there was a small Wristly AW app for the purpose of verifying that resgistrants are actually watch users.
As an engineer, I am highly in like with my watch, with satisfaction growing. I will be happy when there are more apps and more running natively with wOS2. I am getting more and more motivated by the fitness app. The maps app is great as well.
I bought AW’s for my mom and sister at the end of launch week. Both have different use cases. 82 yo mom uses it for reminders, timers, and controlling hearing aids. 50 yo sister uses it for timer and pedometer. Both use to catch calls and for racking up grew flyer miles w Apple Pay (both also love the winning security features of AP.)
Thanks for the post. Your Mom’s usage sounds very interesting. Does she like it or is it proving to be a bit naggy (as some users have reported to me). I’m a fan of AP, too, but use it on my IPhone 6 where I also keep the grocery list.
I’m not a “techie.” The reason I follow Apple as closely as I do is that Apple has made technology interesting to me for the first time since I was a kid. I’d long-since outgrown caring about gadgets for what they were, and only occasionally did something come along that could change my life in a way that was worth the effort of dealing with its learning curve (I can think of three: Excel, the internet itself, and GPS). I’m sure I’m far from alone in this; in fact, I’m probably close to the mainstream of current Apple users in this regard.
It’s that ability to make ordinary people care about and get life-improving benefits from its devices that makes Apple unique. Technology plus humanities equals progress. Your research is the best indication I’ve seen to date that the Apple Watch may have hit its target.
The overall stats here show that 34% are “somewhat satisfied” or dissatisfied, so I wouldn’t consider the Watch a resounding success. The sat level of App Builders is very troubling. Here in Seattle and within my network of early tech adopters, there are few Apple Watch owners. I attribute that to a number of issues:
http://ldgregg.postach.io/post/why-apple-needs-to-pivot-with-the-watch-wearables-qs-corporatewellness-mhealth
Of the Watch owners I’ve surveyed, 100% of them would reconsider the purchase and would definitely fall into that “somewhat satisfied” category.
You say “I wouldn’t consider the Watch a resounding success.” Ben Bajarin says ”To judge if Apple Watch owners are delighted, we can safely conclude the answer is a resounding yes.” I have a feeling he’s using a lot better methodology than you are.
The survey does not equate ‘somewhat satisfied’ to dissatisfied, sounds as though you are projecting. I am non-tech and love my AW, the activity app has me completely focused on daily calorie burn. Apple Pay is way slick and digital touch is magic
I agree. Those are great apps and I use them – on my IPhone 6. The point is that if you are in the demographic that has never worn a watch and use the iPhone 6, there is no compelling draw to an Watch. It’s redundant and expensively so!
Lynne you have seriously missed the point, and I’m not going to try to explain it to you.
“Those are great apps and I use them – on my IPhone 6”
Sorry, this isn’t possible. You can’t use those apps in exactly the same way re: Watch vs iPhone. You’re assuming two things are equivalent when they are actually different. The difference is subtle but important. Anyone who says “Oh, I can just do that on my phone” (as you are) is admitting they don’t see the value in the additive convenience of a wearable. That’s fine, but you can’t then make the leap that the value doesn’t exist for others.
In sum, I think you’re actually making the case for why Android Wear isn’t going to do very well for a long time, and projecting that onto Apple Watch.
I am all about wearables and think an Apple iPhone 6 is a fabulous replacement for the Fitbit I lost just before I got the iPhone 6. I’m a bleeding edge technology adopter and lover but think that Apple needs to do a better job if they’re going to charge a premium price for something that I (and millions of non-watch wearing Millennials) can still do with the iPhone 6. That’s not to say that Apple is not going to make a great 2.0 version of the Watch. Sensor technology is rapidly advancing and I think they will do great things in upcoming versions – including solar charging (which they happen to have patented for such devices).
Still, when such a significant number of App Devs rate the device so poorly (as in report) that’s concerning.
“Still, when such a significant number of App Devs rate the device so poorly (as in report) that’s concerning.”
I don’t agree. All that shows is they haven’t figured out what to do with it yet. And why would they? It is an opposite direction from iPhone to iPad. That is an easier task. Making something bigger or adding features? Easy. Asking someone to strip down what they do to essentials (if it even translates at all), that’s hard. As counter intuitive as it may seem, a lot of entrepreneurs and developers aren’t all that imaginative when handed something new. Like most people they fall back on what’s familiar.
Joe
“I am all about wearables and think an Apple iPhone 6 is a fabulous replacement for the Fitbit”
This makes no sense. The iPhone isn’t a wearable, and it is not an appropriate replacement for a Fitbit.
More concerning is the repeating of spurious bad reporting as facts. Developers haven’t even had the SDK for much more than a month. What do you expect? They’re still figuring it out.
actually note the small print next to very satisfied. We added “delighted” which is not usually done in first box customer sat surveys. The fact that with “delighted” in that option it was a high as it was is extremely telling.
AW has caused my iPhone usage to plummet. Usage now 2-4m most days. Some days 20-50m, if I use it to listen to Apple Music. My iPhone has become mostly a battery for my watch.
Apple Watch. The first few days I got it, I kept playing with it non stop. I believe I share this with most of you who own the watch. Later on, I find it more conveniently necessary than an exciting toy, I wear it everyday, and when I didn’t, I felt half naked. I seldom check the screen anymore other than train schedule and weather, but when it’s convenient, Siri is a quick press. The things that I can’t live without now is the notifications on wrist. I will never miss any calls or messages when my phone is inside my bag or in silent mode.
Excellent article Ben, let’s hope this gets picked up far and wide.
I think it got pretty well circulated today 🙂 and Thanks Kirk. We have more good research coming from the Wristly guys as well.
It’s a bit misleading to compare this survey to the ones for iPhone and iPad though, as in the case of the Watch, the sample of people are all Apple/iPhone users and thus predisposed to liking it more. So the respondents are kind of a biased sub-sample of the samples used for iPhone and iPad. Might not be that important, might be very important. Weird that it’s not mentioned.
Possibly true with iPhone but one has to assume those who bought the first iPhone were largely Mac users, apple fans etc. We know mainly early adopters bought that product. Same would have been true with iPad. Largely Apple folks and largely early adopters. What we were able to quantify was for the first time later stages of the adoption cycle spectrum purchased a gen 1 product. That has not been done before.
I’m not worried about the bias because we are focusing on people in the Apple ecosystem not those outside the apple ecosystem. So there is already an affinity to the Apple ecosystem present across the adoption cycle spectrum we highlighted which bought an Apple Watch and is happy with it.
What this survey seems to miss is that it only asks for opinions from current watch owners. The only people I know who had Apple Watches no longer have them because they don’t provide any particular usefulness.
How do you recalibrate for the fact that people who dislike the watch would have sold them, especially when the price was at a premium due to short supply? With the iPhone, people were tied into contracts, so that wasn’t so easy and the iPad has a lot more utility.
note that at 800 people the margin of error was less than 1%. What that tells us is those you spoke of who returned it or in our survey were very dissatisfied are a very very small % of the overall sentiment of Apple Watch.
I wasn’t being clear. The survey requires you to be an Apple Watch owner to contribute, so those who had returned or sold their Watch wouldn’t be included – and you have no way to tell how many that was. It may be a very small number, but you can’t assert that it was from your own survey because you have no visibility of that group of people.
Watches are generally for the older generations and whilst the Apple watch has its own appeal, it’s not elegant or embodying craftsmanship. From a personal perspective, I already had a watch and the idea of having another device to charge every day killed it for me as a purchase.
Ah, yes of course we can’t track returns since those are done in Apple’s retail channels which aren’t trackable but given the sample size and small margin for error, as well as the broad diverse consumer profile range we have in our panel, it is safe to conclude this is representative.
Now six months from now maybe the story changes. Maybe people fall out of love with it, maybe they stop wearing it, etc. We are tracking all of that as well.
So it is clear, we are running weekly surveys with this group, mostly trying to understand usage, likes, dislikes, etc., So we actually already have quite a bit of data already around some of the things you mentioned like who owned what before, what the age demographic is, gender mix, etc.
Based on the methodology I’m quite confident our data but as I said we will tell the story as it is as we get continued data.
I can only give anecdotal evidence, all the people I know who bought an Apple Watch sold it later because they all said it was “useless”. So I have a gut feeling that these surveys tend to be self-reinforcing by only having current owners included. 97% satisfaction is very high for a device that has so many shortcomings and is quite poor value for money. The data says I’m wrong however, so it’s a waiting game.
Every single person I know who has one says the opposite. Useless is simply not the case. Because many of use find them quite useful. So it’s a matter of opinion, and what group you run with. The numbers here are accurate. You just fall into the 3 percent.
You comments are just as anecdotal as mine and have the same value. Useless is quite the case for some people, so you cannot say that it isn’t, it’s just your opinion. I doubt the numbers because they only include positive outcomes, but time will tell. I don’t fall into any percentage because I never bought an Apple Watch.
So, lemme get this straight. Confirmatory anecdote=Bad. Contradictory anecdote=good. Actual research study=Bad. Does that about sum it up. I think my cat is smarter than you.
You mean, relative to your 3rd hand, anecdotes? LOL, good to know. Again, you should finish HS and THEN comment.
Hey Bart, thanks for brightening up a dreary wet day here. Luckily Ben understood my point, even if you didn’t.
We all get your point, loud and clear. Try to be less obvious next time. No-one is going to believe that 100% of your customer sample was dissatisfied with and got rid of the Apple Watch (or anything, really).
You are actually asking for a less objective survey. You are asking for a survey of non users. Your original comment was clueless, this one is just as clueless, and no more clear. You should take a Sociology 101 course at your local jr. college.
LOL, so you want someone to run a user satisfaction survey of non-users? Nice flame, try to be a little less obvious of a troll next time, OK?
Well, I´m a bit shocked about that positive feedback. I got the watch 2 months ago using it daily and I am not satisfied with it at all. In my opinion this is a bad product not working properly. I love my Mac, iPhone, iPad, even my iBook and many other Apple products I can´t buy. But I do NOT love the Apple Watch at all and I can not believe this survey is true. Why are you people happy with those 10 ridiculous watchfaces ? Aren´t they boring ? Why 10 and not 100 or 1000 ? Why is there no watchface editor ? How can you be pleased with that ? Can you even take a look at the flowers and stuff before you got your look away ? Is the “Scree-On-An-Off” function reliably working ? Do any messages arrive reliably ? No, no, no, no…. Not at all ! The truth is: Apple Watch is fat and heavy, the battery is weak, it´s much too expensive, too many restrictions, you can´t even build on messaging, it´s slow, operation is anything but clear and comfortable, you can´t even expect a tip to be recognized each and every time. Please open your eyes… Apple Watch is a beautiful, overpriced trash article, that´s what it is, the truth hurts but sorry.
I think you should have taken it back. For what it’s worth no-one I’ve spoken with has any of those complaints. Neither do I.
I couldn´t check the watch in 2 weeks, impossible.
Interesting. So, two weeks in, did you love the Watch, like it, or feel indifferent to it. Personally I liked mine after a few days, and like it even more after a month. When did your not-knowing turn into dissatisfaction? Genuine question.
Hey… I see. First impression was: Wow, really cool. Happy !! Very beautiful… That euphoria held on for about two weeks. Calmed down then into phase two… testing… get familiar with all those functions step by step. Still the impression was positive and interesting. Never judge anything before you can be sure. So I kept my good feelings, worked through the apps and settings and stuff in all the different situations of my daily life, try out as much as possible. While walking, sleeping, reading, watching, working, driving and so on. Got into several store app extentions of different kinds. Made my workout. Made phone calls, used Siri, took a deep look into all watchfaces and what can be done with them. And many other things. Slowly but surely I recognized the flaws. About 4-5 weeks later a certain point was reached where I could come to a conclusion. I wrote a review on Amazon (DE) to make up my mind about it and writing that review was the end of that process. That´s it… I can see that people here (in Germany) do argue a lot about this topic. 28 from 39 people liked my review on the Watch, one person assumed me being payed by Samsung for the bad review – lol. Anyway it seems to me people in the USA do like the Watch better than here in Germany. Cheers.
Just to reconfirm what you probably already know, your point of view does not contradict with Ben’s article at all. You are simply a member of the rare 1% that is very dissatisfied with the Apple Watch, according to Ben’s data.
This actually makes your comment very scarce and hence valuable.
Nice POV ! 🙂
Really? You’re going to make that list of non-issues and opinions (not facts) stand out as truth for all people?
My battery is great. I almost always end the day over 70 percent charged. Messages get to me 100 percent. I do wish I could tell Messages to retry sending a message that didn’t go out because I forgot to go through a log-in on my iPhone to a local wifi first.
If you expected an iPhone on your wrist, then you were not paying attention. Your assumption that you understand objective truth on this subject is kind of funny.
Oh, you call me a liar, do you ? Always believe the worst, right ? I just share my own personal experiences, truly. Believe it or not. You did not ask yourself, if my words could be true, do you ? Maybe we have different personal settings and this is why it works there and does not work here? Maybe different people have different standards ? How is it possible that I have recently seen reviews from people with very similar experiences ? And you might be able to answer this very last question: How does it come that the Apple Watch is selling that bad ? Because it is such a good product ? Yes, for sure. Keep on having fun with your watch.
It’s funny, I have noticed that all the trolls start with the ‘I have LOTS of Appel stuff, I really, really do, but this new (insert thing you are flaming here) is really terrible. Oh, yeah, I could have returned it but I didn’t (because I am so smart).
Fat and heavy? Next to what, the Samsung watch? LOL. Why did you buy it? Oh, right, you never really bought any of this stuff you are claiming…
Wait, I am so extremely confused about the stuff you write here. I can´t get the point. It´s a bit like reading another language. Trolls ? What are you talking about ? You call me a troll ? Why ? I did not return it for a simple reason, because I needed 2 months to come to my personal conclusion. I had to use it intensively first, is this clearly understandable ? I bought it because I was fascinated, somehow charmed, full of greed and positive expectations according to the keynotes, advertisements, reports and so on. Fat and heavy ? Sorry, but I can´t see why you wrote that. What do you mean with that question ? Why should I be “fat and heavy” ? What is the idea behind that suspicion ? I don´t understand it. Are “Trolls” supposed to be fat and heavy ? Why should they ? Samsung watch ? Why should I have a Samsung watch or not ?
Obviously, you have the attention span of a gnat.
I like the results of this survey a lot, but more than that, I think the real value in this report is the methodology, the customer segmentation and the questions that were asked. Your attempt to separate the preferences of the techies and the non-techies is seriously important and maybe even groundbreaking in the field of tech. I hope that this style of analysis becomes the norm in the future.
I think it would also be interesting to perform a similar survey on smartphone users. One mystery that I don’t think has been sufficiently answered through evidence, is why the iPhone is so strong despite Android phones with superficially similar features. I think the secret may also lie in customer segmentation by tech-familiarity.
Thank’s for noticing 😉
Was the survey not open to those who tried AW, were dissatisfied, and decided to return or sell it?
It would be interesting to know the return rate. The recent NYT article takes a stab at sales volume (3-5M units in 2Q) which isn’t bad, but not great. There are a few analyst articles out today that are speculating the version 2 of the watch will feature new colors, options, and price points, particularly on the low end of the line. I think the initial Watch didn’t quite hit the mark because of price point and demographic target, but that’s not to say that with some tweaks and lots more great apps, the Watch can’t be a real winner. Here’s the NYT piece: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/20/technology/personaltech/apple-waits-as-app-developers-study-whos-buying-its-watch.html
Anything north of 3.2 million would make it the best-selling first generation product in Apple’s history. Our estimates are 4.7m and we believe Apple is on track to sell 21m in calendar 2015. Which if you understand how new category adoption cycles work is quite impressive.
Sure if they opted in when they had the watch and returned it they can still take the survey. I’ve checked with friendlies throughout Apple retail stores nationally and our checks suggest return rate is low.
I also thought this bit from UBS might be of interest. I agree that the China market can be very strong for Watch, particularly with Apple’s retail expansion there. http://www.cnbc.com/2015/05/18/survey-apple-watch-demand-strongest-in-china.html
As a gateway to the user’s iPhone, where the user can filter which message sources to be notified about and which to ignore, Apple Watch works as advertised. Early adopters knew that going in, so it’s no surprise that most of them are happy now.
All the hype about the product from technology sites wanting to boost page views have created numerous phony issues about Apple Watch, resulting in confusion about the product’s mission and its features that turned off many would-be buyers. If those people’s expectations were unrealistic, it is for the best that they did not buy a Watch. But I have a feeling a lot of people who might have bought and enjoyed a Watch became nervous about being called out by friends and colleagues as a fanboi or worse, portrayed as somehow phony and pretentious. I don’t think this is fair to the product or to its audience.
From the beginning my sense has been that Watch will acquire a small but loyal following of technology buffs and heavy cellphone users. Combined with an iPhone and a good Bluetooth headset (paired with the iPhone, not to the Watch), the result is a powerful, mobile, multimedia communications system.
You didn’t measure how long each user have had the watch. A lot of reviewers have said that after less than a month they have become less enamoured with the Watch and some have gone as far as returning it. You also did not measure what features they liked or disliked.
I love the idea of these people who claim to not be early adopters who just happen to have early adopted.
Methodology looks seriously flawed, how people behave is far more important than how people say they behave, and by definition this group of people either found a bag of Apple watches,were given them as gifts or are indeed highly unrepresentative and highly involved in the category.
Maybe, just maybe the label “techie” doesn’t appeal to these people.
The term ‘early adopter’ refers to technology in general, not the Apple Watch specifically. So a person who self-identifies as NOT an early-adopter may (for example) not usually buy new products, may not have the latest iPhone as soon as it launches, may still be running Windows 7 on their PC, and so on. I know two people who fall into that category and who either purchased or, in one case, were gifted an Apple Watch.
I think it’s a very gift-able thing, too, so the number of ‘non early adopters’ who in this case are in fact ‘early adopters’ will be higher than average. I’m thinking of getting my Dad a Watch for Christmas, for example, and his PC is still running Windows Vista (not that he uses it very often). His iPhone is a second-hand iPhone 5, which he basically uses for phone calls and texts (again, received it as a gift). By no stretch would you call him an ‘early adopter’, but he will have an Apple Watch because it’s a cool gift.