Trying to Bring Apple Watch to Android
As part of its response to the United States DOJ lawsuit today, Apple confirmed that it at one point considered creating an Apple Watch for Android. The company tells me that it spent three years working on bringing Apple Watch to Android before ultimately scrapping the idea.
This was Project Fennel, which I wrote about last year.
I’d love to know more about this because it doesn’t seem to make much sense given the way apps work. Would it have been just be the built-in apps and some health features? If there’s an antitrust issue here, I would think it’s with lack of support for third-party watches on iOS rather than not supporting Apple Watch on Android.
Previously:
- U.S. Sues Apple Over iPhone Monopoly
- DMA Compliance: Default App Controls and NFC
- EU Objects to Apple Limiting Third-Party Access to NFC
- Why There’s No iMessage for Android
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I think this would be a non-starter either way.
If you allow non-Apple watches to access the iPhone, how would that work? Give them access to data on the iPhone? From what? An app written for Android and synced to an Android watch? Too many holes. And how do those apps get onto the non-Apple watch? Some kind of alternate, 3rd-party watch app store, no doubt.
If you allow Apple Watches to work on Android, a lot of the same problems are there, although I guess Android would happily share your data with the Apple Watch. But how would you get apps onto your Apple Watch? Would developers then need to write Apple Watch companion apps for Android?
Seems like it's best to think of Apple Watch as an accessory for iPhone.
>If you allow non-Apple watches to access the iPhone, how would that work? Give them access to data on the iPhone? From what? An app written for Android and synced to an Android watch? Too many holes. And how do those apps get onto the non-Apple watch? Some kind of alternate, 3rd-party watch app store, no doubt.
Leaving aside apps (they aren't that big a deal on Apple Watch either): iOS already _does_ offer some facilities for fitness trackers, and, yep, it could offer more of those. The tricky part is to objectively answer: how much of that does Apple not want to do because offering third-party APIs — especially ones that need to cross privacy/security boundaries — increases complexity, and how much do they not want to do it because it gives Apple Watch a competitive advantage?
> If you allow Apple Watches to work on Android, a lot of the same problems are there, although I guess Android would happily share your data with the Apple Watch. But how would you get apps onto your Apple Watch? Would developers then need to write Apple Watch companion apps for Android?
Probably. Apple could document the WKWatchConnectivity protocol, or offer an Android library for it.
But again, for better or worse, third-party apps aren't big on the Watch anyway. Merely offering Apple's first-party fitness stuff to sync to some Android thing (either Google's, or a variant of Apple's) would probably be plenty.
I agree that the anti trust issue would be Apple raising artificial barriers to keep the competition away, much like not giving access to the very much non-apple invention NFC on their phones.