← Back to context

Comment by ApolIllo

2 years ago

> Who cares about smartwatches

219.43 million people use smartwatches

I assume that's worldwide? That definitely seems niche to me compared to the global population.

  • How large does a business need to be on a global scale before we can smack down bad actors for abusing it? If you are a street corner business and your competitors down the street sell things at a loss just until they can put you out of business, should that be allowed because you were only a local business and didn't have millions of customers?

  • I don't think global population is a factor in antitrust law.

    • It's a factor in whether "219.43 million people" is a lot of people. If that's 219 million people in the US (i.e. well over half the population), that's obviously massively more significant than 219 million people worldwide.

      1 reply →

  • Regardless of the size, it does that make it okay to hamper competition like they do.

    If this was such an insignificant niche, Apple Watch wouldn't even exist, would it?

  • I don't really know about sourcing market data, but this[0] page cites Deloitte and Pew:

    >The global smartwatch adoption rate has reached an impressive 21.7% of the adult population

    ...

    >The adoption rate of smartwatches is expected to continue growing, with industry projections suggesting that it will surpass 25% of the adult population shortly.

    I don't believe a fifth or a quarter of the adult population could rationally be called 'niche'.

    0. https://scoop.market.us/smartwatch-statistics/

This is irrelevant. The primary argument people have against Apple is their platform indirectly impacts how other businesses can operate generally. The smartwatch never took off as a platform, so it exercises no such influence.