Apple's lock-in strategy

Even Apple can't escape the gravity of centuries of tradition and the Apple Watch is a great case in point. Sure enough it sits on the wrist like a regular watch, looks like a regular watch and tells the time like a regular watch but that's where all of the similarities end. Traditional watches aren't packed full of sensors, actuators or software that can record your pulse and blood sugar levels on the fly and you certainly can't use them to control the plethora of connected home products - from connected door locks and lighting systems all the way through to connected alarms and music systems that are now hitting the high street shelves and this is where with every new iteration the Apple Watch will come into its own.

Despite my impression that Apple has been lazy with the design, for example a lack of gesture control that would have made navigation simpler and a needless requirement for you to tether it to your iPhone to access basic functions this is Apple's first piece of wearable technology and its latest weapon in the war to capture a share of not one but three new global mass markets worth an estimated $2 trillion. So while the watch itself might not be innovative, no one will be able to deny that it isn't packed with potential.

The walled garden

As the world, particularly the corporate world continues to push vendors like IBM, Oracle, Cisco and HP to embrace open standards and open source technologies, such as OpenStack, Cloud Foundry or Linux, Apple has adopted the opposite stance creating proprietary hardware and platforms that firmly lock you into their ecosystem and this is one of the reasons why today, despite falling market share, it remains one of the world's most profitable companies.

If you're an Apple user ask yourself this question - if the day came where you decided Apple just wasn't the brand for you how easy do you think it would be to port all your data and purchases across to your new devices? Well, for starters you'd have to buy all of your apps again - presuming they're all available for your music, well it's possible to port it all across to your new Android or Microsoft device but you have to perform a data migration and if you're not technical then good luck with that.

Moving off of Apple's proprietary platforms is inevitably a hassle and I know you're crying out for more of those in your life. But as Apple continues to hook us all into more of its services and, if rumours on the wire are true, you buy into Apple's new range of own brand Connected Home products. When these emerge you're going to find that it gets increasingly hard to wean yourself off of your Apple habit whether you like it or not.

The author is Matthew Griffin, an emerging technology and disruptive innovation expert. Re-printed with permission.
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