Are you going to buy an Apple Watch?

The Apple Watch event has come and gone. What's left is a buzz about how beautiful it is, how expensive it is and perhaps how can you justify buying one. Clearly, if the world’s greatest company made it, it must be useful to me, somehow. Steve Jobs always said, that consumers don't know what they want and it is up to companies like Apple to show them what they want. Now that the Apple watch is out, I just need to dig deep and rationalise why I need it and why I have been longing for it all these years. Tim Cook said, "he has been wanting to use the watch to communicate like Dick Tracy did since he was 5 years old". Does this resonate with your thought process? Or have you pretty well made up your mind to either buy it or ignore it? Those of you who are yet to be convinced are probably saying to yourselves and others, "the phone does everything the watch does, so why should I get another gadget which needs to be tethered to my phone to do what the phone already does" ? Its not like you need the watch to tell time. Those of you enamored by the beauty of the watch, and lets face it, it is beautiful, will simply say "its a gorgeous accessory and I am worth it". Those of you seduced by Jony Ive's description of the innovation that went into making of the watch, will say "I am buying an elegant piece of engineering". Now lets take the emotions out of this conversation and decide objectively whether you really need this device or is it a luxury item reserved only for those who love to spend money. The industry consensus is that the watch is not all that useful. So, let’s take a look to see if there is any potential for it being useful down the road. The question for Apple shareholders is whether this will be as big as the iphone or not. After all, Apple has yet to come out with a radically new product category since the Steve Jobs era. Currently, the industry largely perceives Apple as a one product company despite its enormous success. Some of you are probably screaming right about now, "what about Apple Pay". I am of the camp that combined with the lead in fingerprint technology already available on the iphone, this will eventually be a big revenue source for Apple. But that's a topic for another time. Lets get back to the watch. What will make the watch a device that will entice the middle class along with the affluent to buy one today or in the future? 
Lets look at the demographic trend. With the population base getting older in most western nations, the need for fitness and health monitoring will get ever more significant. So, is this the killer app category for the watch. This is one respect in which the watch does what the phone cannot unless you strap the phone to your chest ! 

If you believe that health and fitness related applications will only gain in popularity riding with the demographic trend, then this watch along with the category of such wearables will eventually dominate. What would have been a nice to have device will become a must have device. Tim cook is counting on the fact that Apple has a design lead in this category and with mastery of health and fitness application domains in the future, it will come to dominate this space. As a shareholder of Apple, I hope the promise of this product category holds up and therefore I will watch this space carefully through the passage of time !