December 2019 • Macworld 11As I listened to this week’s financial recap
of Apple’s latest blockbuster quarter, I kept my
ears perked for mentions of the places where the
company seemed to be doing particularly well.
Ready to wear
If there’s one standout bright spot in this quarter’s
results, it’s probably Apple’s wearables/home/
accessories category, which grew a staggering 54
percent year over year to a revenue of $6.5 billion.
To put that in a larger context, Tim Cook said that
the wearables business “generated more annual
revenue than two-thirds of the companies in the
Fortune 500”. For a business that more or less
didn’t exist five years ago, that’s a huge growth curve.
The upshot? Don’t expect Apple to back off
wearables anytime soon. Given that the category
currently encompasses the Apple Watch, AirPods
(and new AirPods Pro), and the Beats audio
devices, there’s still a lot of room left to expand. Of
course, a much-rumoured Apple augmented reality
headset is the primary target of speculation here,
but even should that materialize, that’s still only a
small percentage of the body accounted for. There
are plenty of other possibilities, from smart rings
to additional health sensors that can communicate
with your Apple Watch. Dare I even speculate
about, some day, smart shoes?
Wearables are the most personal form of
technology that Apple has developed – they’re on
our bodies, after all – and that tends to engender
strong feelings. Cook also argued that wearables