April 24, 2025, marks 10 years since the Apple Watch first went on sale. It was actually announced during a special event on September 9, 2014, but only became available to buy over seven months later, on April 24, 2015.
While it seems hard now to recall a time when the Apple Watch, or something similar, did not exist, the market hasn't always been so obvious. It was only 10 years ago that we were still wondering if Pebble would actually pan out, and all anyone wanted a Fitbit for was to get in their 10,000 steps (an entirely arbitrary number, but I digress).
When it debuted, the first Apple Watch was glitchy and expensive. Battery life sucked. Many publications, including mine, spent significant time and space wondering why anyone even wanted a smartwatch. Today, it is an Apple success story. “Since 2015 til the end of 2024, we estimate that 281.2 million Apple watches have been shipped,” Jitesh Ubrani, a device research manager at IDC tells WIRED. That's at an estimated value of $127 billion. No wonder it has spawned a flotilla of imitators.
However, on its tenth anniversary (or perhaps more appropriately its aluminum anniversary), the Apple Watch Series 10 faces a tumultuous global market. Even before the Trump administration announced tariffs, global smartwatch sales were slumping. As innovation slows (or is blocked in patent disputes), people are now holding onto their Apple devices for longer, while newer smartwatches, such as the Galaxy Watch are also coming for Apple’s lunch.
Sleeping Beauty
Check Reddit’s r/AppleWatch and you’ll find people who still own—and use—the original Series 0. It’s a reminder that Apple’s Jony Ive poured years of work into a tiny design that was originally intended to be a piece of jewelry, before reportedly clashing with executives over what the watch’s eventual function would be.
Initial unfortunate nomenclature aside—Tim Cook casually called it “the iWatch”, before that horrible name was kiboshed due to patent squabbles—it was beguiling, and Ive had his wish. Walking into an Apple Store and picking out your case and accessories was the closest many might have come to a luxury watch purchasing experience.
Because the Watch is not just a simple timepiece—you can change it to suit your needs, or mood. When you buy an Apple Watch, you can also pick or change your bands, from the now-classic Milanese loop to the company’s successful collaboration with Hermès. You can change your watch face to suit your outfit, to check if Snoopy has a cute new cartoon for the day, to go sailing, or map your way back off the trail. Those two ingenious buttons on the case’s back that let you easily switch out your straps at a whim with no tools are now copied by almost all manufacturers in the watch industry, not just smartwatch manufacturers.
“Apple showed that [the strap] was a critical part of the design language, but also laid down the gauntlet in engineering secure, easy-to-use quick-release systems that didn’t require tools. Brands have put a lot of R&D into this,” said Tim Barber, WIRED’s watch expert.
While the $10,000 Apple Watch was certainly a folly—you still have to update an Apple Watch, even when it’s pure gold (except when you no longer can)—the watch itself is to my eyes both beautiful and declaratory: wearing one signifies that you’re a serious person who cares about fitness and getting work done. It’s the only watch that has ever outsold the entire Swiss watch industry, and actually, Barber notes, in part, reinvigorated the luxury watch industry.
“Rather than wipe out mechanical watches, as some thought it would—hence the folly of TAG Heuer, Montblanc and others getting into ultimately inferior smart watches—Apple Watch reinvigorated them as a prestige item specifically apart, and in opposition to, digital culture,” says Barber. “That undoubtedly benefitted watchmakers. It’s almost certainly been a net positive.”
Ive and the Apple Watch design team hit upon a key concept when it comes to digital wearables: It’s a form of self-expression that you wear on your wrist, and it must actually look good for you to want to wear it. It was a health tracker that wasn’t as overtly health-coded as a Fitbit or a Garmin. In fact, when the Series 0 first launched, it had only a few simple health features—the now-iconic Activity Rings, the workout app, an optical heart sensor, and the heart app.
Ten years on, Activity Rings remains one of the best examples yet of fitness gamification. (Today is also Global Close Your Rings Day; if you close them today, you get a limited-edition award.) Every fitness tracker has a step counter, but the visual demonstration of how little you have left to do to close the Move ring has launched a thousand memes, and even a couple T-shirts.
A Wellness Story
Prior to the Apple Watch, smartwatches were conceived as a kind of wrist-based mini smartphone, to ping you with notifications or to take calls off your wrist. David Naranjo, associate director of Counterpoint Research, noted in a phone call with WIRED that Apple’s success in this category was largely due to completely changing the watch’s use case—from being a smartwatch, to being a smartwatch with a dedicated health and fitness aspect.
“Fitbit and others had [an ecosystem and apps], but there were other things they were not able to do,” Naranjo said. “Apple built out the ecosystem and made the healthcare story very strong. Not only did [the company] focus on fitness and heart rate, it went beyond fitness and looked at a much deeper level of healthcare. That’s where Apple excelled.”
Every year, Apple launches one standout health feature, from measuring VO2 Max on the Series 3 to the ECG sensor on the Series 4, all the way to sleep apnea notifications on the Series 10. “If you zoom out way into the future, and you look back and ask what Apple’s biggest contribution was, it will be in the health area,” Cook said in an interview with WIRED last year.
This is a bold thing to say, especially given that the Series 10 and Watch Ultra 2 don’t even have blood oxygen measuring, due to a patent dispute with the medtech company Masimo. For a while, Apple has been doing research into features that would transform the Apple Watch for people with chronic conditions, like adding noninvasive blood glucose monitoring for diabetics, or adding blood pressure measuring for people with hypertension. Alas, despite promising advances, these features have yet to materialize.
Apple’s latest project, an AI-assisted comprehensive health service, is far behind other health manufacturers such as Oura, Whoop, or even Garmin. Imagine, for example, being able to take a picture of your meal with the Watch Ultra and uploading it to the (still rudimentary) Health app, the way you already can with the Meals feature on an Oura Ring 4. You have to imagine it for now, of course, because the Apple Watch doesn't currently have a camera, and Apple’s Visual Intelligence is still limited to the iPhone 16. But it seems within reach.
Still, the Watch’s wearability and seeming ubiquity does mean that it has a track record of saving peoples’ lives, whether that’s by notifying users of an irregular heart rhythm via the ECG feature or calling the emergency services if it recognizes the user has fallen or been in a serious crash. I also have a personal anecdote to report—before the blood oxygen feature was removed, I had pneumonia. How did I know? My blood oxygen level, as measured by the watch, was at 84 percent. I went to urgent care and got antibiotics, stat.
While Apple has not historically always been first to market with a new health feature, it’s a fast follower, and the features nearly always work. “Apple owners are very patient when it comes to Apple,” Naranjo says. “They’ve come to believe that Apple doesn’t rush to market with something that isn’t almost perfect.”
Why You Wear It
That point seems to bear out with the research. In 2022, nearly 80 percent of Apple iPhone owners also owned an Apple Watch, and it accounted for 56 percent of smartwatch sales in the North American market. Most importantly, research suggests most people who own an Apple Watch are pretty satisfied with their device.
As most of them are likely Apple users already, it helps that the Watch—like all Apple devices—integrates seamlessly with Apple’s ecosystem. It’s intuitive, easy to use, and has an interface that is pleasing to experience—both for the first time, and 10 years on. I still twirl and push every day the tiny digital crown every day, and find it a great way for navigating the device's smaller menus without obscuring text with your fingers.
The Taptic Engine that gently buzzes on your wrist has now been adapted to dozens of uses, from waking you up in the morning to gently pointing you in the right direction while you’re walking or biking around and using Apple Maps. There is no way to count just how many tourists have not gotten robbed because they did not need to pull out their phone to figure out how to get back to the hotel from the bagel shop, but the number I imagine must be considerable. Whether you’re pausing a podcast or doing a couple toe touches in the middle of the day, life seems a little easier with an Apple Watch.
I took a brief and stunningly informal essay of WIRED Gear team members who also wear Apple Watches on why they bought or wear one. Notifications, integration with the Apple ecosystem, and fitness tracking were the most common answers. “Waterllama also helps me keep track of my hydration,” product reviewer Ryan Waniata says.
“Can I confess that … the only thing I use my Apple Watch for is to ding my iPhone and find out where I lost it at home?” asked senior writer Zeyi Yang. Yes! I use it to find my AirPods Pro, too. The UWB chip that debuted in the Series 9 has saved countless minutes every morning, even if you’re just finding AirTags and your phone with it, but sadly not using it to unlock your self-driving Apple car.
It’s so easy to use, we’re still willing to forgive its most annoying flaws, most notably the battery life. Charging your Apple Watch every day is the bane of my existence, and despite years of efforts to improve it, the closest that Apple has come is to launch … fast charging? Loading media onto the watch, even basic offline maps, is such a hassle that even Apple has resigned itself to the fact that most people will end up carrying their phone instead. Apple Watch will even still buzz you to stand up when you're driving on a freeway.
But most of all, there is the unfashionably-late arrival of Apple Intelligence, which launched on iPhone last October. So far, the only Apple Intelligence features that you can use on the Watch (if you have not disabled it due to privacy concerns, or the fact that it’s just kind of annoying or inaccurate) are notification summaries and the Reduce Notifications focus. This is underwhelming, to say the least. The only consolation is that Apple Watch users are not the only Apple customers waiting for Apple Intelligence to become useful.
In 2022, I wrote that Apple’s wearables seem designed for an increasingly terrifying world. While I made fun of the marketing at the time, the world has gotten more uncertain and scary. I’m glad that I talked my husband into wearing an Apple Watch Ultra, and, thanks to Crash Detection, I will now know if he gets into a car accident on the way home. My aging parent now wears an Apple Watch with Fall Detection (and moved two blocks away from me, but that’s another thing), which gives me peace of mind. Since I’ve gotten older, I’m glad that there are more cardio health features on the watch, particularly now that I know that nearly half of all adults in the United States have high blood pressure.
So despite the slowing market, I am still waiting to see what new features—health or otherwise—will be announced at this year’s WWDC, and later on this year. “I would never count Apple out in terms of what they’re able to do,” said Naranjo. “They’ve proven time and time again that they can create a new category and make that category grow.”
I can be patient and wait in Apple’s sticky ecosystem biding time until blood glucose monitoring shows up. Ten years ago, we all asked if we could even find a use for Jony Ive’s piece of glittery, buzzing jewelry; not even Apple knew the future success that it had on its hands (or its wrists). The Apple Watch is ubiquitous, and we’re still waiting for more.
