Earlier tonight, Jony Ive was interviewed in Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit in San Francisco. The transcript is a fascinating read, but the answer Apple’s Senior Vice President of Design gave to the last question asked really stopped me in my track. Here’s it is, with Ive’s reply in bold:
Do you see yourself moving beyond consumer electronics?
I do see the watch as a move away from consumer electronics.
That’s a huge statement.
When the Apple I first surfaced in 1976, the consumer electronics was industry was vastly different than it was just a few years later. Before the late 1970s, “consumer electronics” meant things like audio systems and televisions; afterwards, the landscape was dominated things like computers, hard drives and eventually music players and smartphones.
While Apple wasn’t the only company responsible for the computerization of consumer electronics, it’s one of a very few that still survive from those early days. Hundreds of PC makers have come and gone, and the ones that are left are dying. The Mac may be growing, but it’s doing so in a market that’s collapsing.
Of course, smartphones and tablets are the escape route for Cupertino. Dell, HP and others have struggled to ship compelling devices, watching the future slip through their fingers like sand.
I can’t help but think about Ive’s quote in this light. Apple’s looking beyond the tablet and even beyond the smartphone, searching for what’s next. The Apple Watch is about supercharging fashion with technology, but it’s also about survival. The Apple Watch is pushing the boundaries of what is possible today, reaching for tomorrow in a profound way.
We shouldn’t be surprised; this is what Apple’s always done, since those days in the garage.