Apple has been working for four years on the smartwatch that will be in stores in April. The project was difficult for the company because Apple would have liked to add more sensors to measure the health status of the users, but it failed. The watch will measure the number of steps and the pulse rate, but will not be able to measure blood sugar levels, blood pressure and stress levels because the tests with various sensors were unsatisfactory, writes the Wall Street Journal.
WSJ informs that the development of the long-awaited smartwatch started four years ago and although it’s something normal that Apple experiments a lot with any type of product, the watch development was not easy and consumed a large quantity of financial resources. The project became controversial even inside the company. Why was everything so difficult? Because when Apple started to work on the smartwatch, they wanted to create a complex device to measure many things related to the health of the wearer like blood pressure, blood sugar or stress levels. None of these functions will be present because either the sensors provided misleading results, or they would have been too complex to be added to the watch.
For example, Apple would have wanted to have watch sensors that can measure skin conductivity, give accurate data about the stress levels of the wearer, the process being similar to that of a lie detector. But the tests proved that the values displayed did not work properly for those with hair on the body or for those with dry skin. Apple would have also wanted to put the sensors for measuring blood sugar levels without collecting blood, but technically this is extremely difficult and the results were inconsistent. The company would have planned to add a sensor for measuring the blood pressure, but this also has proved to be nonviable. If we think that the digital blood pressure monitors are sometimes inaccurate, it’s not hard to realize that for a small smartwatch, this would have been even more difficult to calculate with accuracy.
As Apple they could not add all the sensors they had planned initially, the watch became a big problem for Apple. The company could not use the idea of focusing on measuring specific indicators of health. However, the Apple Watch offers something for everybody: it is fashion accessory, has the ability to act as a complimentary device to the iPhone, it has support for Apple Pay or can can measure the daily physical activity of the wearer. It’s not exactly revolutionary, but given the tendency of consumers to purchase Apple product, it’s hard to imagine it flopping financially.