The most common rumor is that the new wearable will be an extension of Apple’s (borrowed) HealthKit. Now you might blink a little at the comment that HealthKit was borrowed by Apple and that it is not anything more than a creation of divine inspiration. However the simple truth is that it borrowed both the name and concept from a company in Australia that goes by the same name. This was uncovered right after Apple announced HealthKit, yet it remains widely believed that Apple invented this software and the concept.

The other side of this is that while Apple is still waiting to push out a wearable device LG, Sony, Pebble, I’M Watch, Motorola, and Samsung already have them. I’M Watch, Sony and Samsung are into multiple generations. Samsung is about to push out their fourth generation product in October while Apple has yet to drop their first.

The Apple faithful will say that is because they are going to do it the right way, but in the end you cannot claim to be an innovator if you are the last guy to the table with your product. It is the same as claiming you are the winner at musical chairs when you are the one left standing. Apple’s PR and Marketing team will still try to spin their product as the first of some kind as this has been their pattern with any new product.
Apple does have a few things to their advantage though. They do have a large and loyal following. This gives them a large install base to work with and also to sell directly to. The number of people tethered to iTunes will also help them as their new iWatch (or whatever it is called) will be linked to that service. There is also the fact that Apple fans tend to like getting the latest and greatest from Apple even if there is little that is new in the product. Having an entirely new vertical in Apple’s product market is likely to do well with this crowd.

So, although the iWatch is late (very late) to the party and is not likely to have any features that make it stand out from the crowd, it will probably do well. Apple will really have to mess things up to keep the core faithful from eating this new product up. They will be able to boast of great sales and high adoption rates and point to the much lower adoption rates for their competitors. This is just what Apple does, if things slow down they have a ton of recently filed patents that they can try to fall back on…

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