Apple Watch: The Race Between The Consumer & Enterprise

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The Apple Watch is out now after a big drum roll….as it continues to push the adoption of wearable technology, it’s a good time to ponder how and where this new i-thing will see adoption in the market. My bet is on the consumer adoption fast outpacing enterprise adoption in the next year or two, and eventually maybe the enterprise will start to catch up.

Given that Mobile Solutions and Devices are still just in the mainstream phase of adoption by Enterprise organizations, we see wearables like this as the next frontier. Especially when they need to be paired with a mobile device anyway.

Here are a couple of interesting case studies/use-cases to consider for the Apple Watch in these early days:

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1) Salesforce.com CRM data on your Apple Watch –

Information Week has a nice piece about the SFDC app for the Apple Watch. What would a VP of Sales do with such an app? The thought is that notification messages that require simple “yes/no” type answers or buttons could be easily handled on this device with ease – such as permission to grant a customer an end-of-quarter discount for instance. A salesperson could look at analytics regarding an account before walking in to the meeting much easier and discreetly, gain powerful background information and context without having to sit in their car and do the same. The SFDC Apple Watch app appears to offer some powerful charting and drill down capabilities which can be harnessed on your wrist. Seems like most use cases revolve around data display, rather than data entry, which is not a surprise given the small screen real estate. As a Salesforce.com power user myself, I look forward to trying it someday.

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2) Shopping app for consumers on your Apple Watch –

ThinkApps, an app development firm, has a few different example Apple Watch apps profiled, most for consumers. This one caught my attention, as I’ve certainly been in the boat of standing at a grocery store with the list of things my wife asked me to buy and having to dig around for my phone to find all that information. This Intelligent Shopping List App by Oscar Peli, makes it possible to display a shopping list conveniently on your wrist and be able to check off items as you pick them up. I could see this easily applying to simple checklists in the enterprise context as well for inspections etc. The key is simplicity & speed.

It will certainly be interesting to see where this technology goes and how it is adopted by the developer community, consumers & enterprises, all of whom will learn from each other. If you see me with a cool gadget on my wrist, watch out, I could be looking you up in my CRM!