The Apple Smart Watch Is Here
Our timing could have been better. With two weeks to go until our big Haystack launch in the USA, Canada, and the UK, we started to hear rumours that Apple had chosen the same day to launch their new smart watch. Some people have called it the not so smart watch because to work properly, it needs to be very close to a smart phone. Others say it’s a game changer because it will do much more than just show us the time.
Haystack were not one of the select few App companies invited into the Apple Labs to perfect the Apple watch version prior to launch. Rumour has it that Facebook, Twitter, and Uber have all been inside the hallowed Apple design factory for the past few weeks to make sure that their Apps all work beautifully so the Apple Watch will hit the ground running. On the surface, this seems to be a smart move for Apple. If the world’s most popular smartphone Apps work nicely on the Apple watch, then consumer acceptance should be instant.
But what about the other smart watch companies out there like Samsung who asked US to develop a version of Haystack for their new smart watch. We met Samsung last year when they were doing a global tour of creative development precincts. Haystack was still only in prototype, and after a lot of thought, we decided that the six figure development cost for modifying Haystack for the Samsung smart watch would probably be better spent on the smartphone version of our App. However I loved the concept of two people wearing smart watches flicking their Haystack cards from one wrist to the other – which is something we will do later this year.
What appeals to me though is Samsung’s approach to finding, developing, and supporting emerging App developers for their platforms which is very different to Apple’s mega App market approach. Will Facebook and Twitter really be killer smart-watch Apps or will Samsung or somebody else come up with a new generation of Apps more suitable to wearable technology? It seems to me that Apple wants to be compatible with a version of everything that’s big right now, whereas Samsung are looking ahead to try and collaborate with Apps and technology that’s not even in the market yet. Time will tell which company will win, but I know who I’m betting my money on, unless Apple’s developer pool does the innovative work for Apple after launch.
But pondering the merits of Apple’s launch strategy didn’t alter the fact that by deciding to launch this week, Apple put a dent in our plans for Haystack world domination. Our press releases were written and our server switch-on strategy was ready to go. Our network of family and friends across the UK and North America were ready but reluctantly we decided to wait another week to press the ‘go-live’ button. Why ? – well we know for certain that Apple will swamp the media this week and there will be no whitespace left for start-up apps like Haystack. When Apple launched the iPad, the mainstream and tech media pretty much ignored everything else for a week. Everything else was lost in the noise as Apple dominated the mainstream and digital media. Even Techcrunch (my bible for everything that matters in the tech world) reduced their coverage of new Apps from their usual ~30 per week to less than 5. On our Australian launch last October, the Channel 7 outside broadcast unit that was going to cover our launch with the Brisbane Lord Mayor was diverted elsewhere an hour before the launch. We had hoped for a very quiet news day and it just didn’t happen. For the USA/UK launch, we hoped for a quiet news week and instead we are faced with the single biggest tech story this year.
After all the ups and downs of the past few months, delaying our US/UK launch until next week was a logical but emotional decision for us. Our development team has exhausted themselves over the previous few months and the further delay was not welcomed. As anyone involved in technology will testify; developers usually want a bit more time to sort out a couple of annoying bugs or make that one screen they don’t like look a little better. That is until they reach the point of exhaustion and all they want to do is hit that go-live button and get one full night’s sleep. We had already delayed the launch by a couple of weeks to get a patent application finished for our new ‘autobrand’ feature. Of course, we also used these two weeks to add in a tiny little bit more functionality which actually ended up being a huge amount of code development and a massive amount of extra testing.
But the international launch of haystack is now on for next week. The Apple watch will be old news by then and the world will be on the look-out for the next big thing to hit the App market. Over the past five weeks, we’ve grown by 44% in Australia alone at about 8% growth week-on-week. Our amazing ‘autobrand’ feature has gone live this morning, which allows users to add new brands to Haystack from within the App. This feature is a game changer for us, making Haystack look even more beautiful, even more of the time. Our original target of 10% week-on-week growth seems within striking range at last. So come on USA, Canada and the UK – download Haystack from Tuesday the 17th March !