While I do think you are probably right I don’t think the possibility is completely unrealistic. I’m not sure what technology is required to communicate with currently available tank mounted transmitters but small companies like Shearwater and larger companies like Garmin seemed to have not only been able to incorporate it into their Watch devices but are doing a good businesses selling them. My guess is that the technology would be useful for other things as well. There are unused sensors within the watch already. What are they for? How are they capitalizing on them now? They’re not, but likely will in the future. That falls on the app development community Once provided the key to unlocking them.
The romanticism of dive watches has made them an incredibly large and important part of the wrist watch market. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Apple would place this sort of ability into a watch that is being marketed to adventurers. I’m sure they are hoping scuba divers and mountaineers all wear this watch. Which could then become a doorway to their other products. For everyone else there is the regular smaller Apple Watch.
Add another 100 meters of rating, the ability to receive signals from any of the currently available transmitters, and possibly a camera and they will have the interest of the entire dive and water sports community. Far more than they already do. Which is one of the points of the watch to begin with. It’s no secret that most purchasers of dive watches don’t dive. So the market exists beyond actual divers, or free divers, or surfers, or explorers of all kinds. It extends to millions of dreamers. Rolex Sea Dwellers are good below 10,000 feet and yet I’d venture that very few divers purchase them. Try to find one in stock at a Rolex dealer.
I’ll finish by saying again that you are probably right. But not for your stated reasoning. There would be a meaningful market and the technology already exists. Software is usually created and supplied by the outside developers just like Oceanic. Shearwater my even become a developer for a market that large. A full scale dive watch that can function as a dive computer that receives signals from a transmitter is well within the ability of Apple. And that technology, at close to current pricing, would be on every divers wrist. Even as backup to more serious purpose driven dive computers. Everything in diving is redundancies. So we will wait and see. No one would have believed Apple would have created a watch capable of functioning as a dive computer to begin with. The last mile for divers would be to offer the ability to add air integration to an already impressive dive watch. My hope is that they do and I’m not nearly as interested if they don’t. It would be a game changer for a lot of people.
Anyway, thanks for your input. Still hoping for the best.
