The Apple Watch has officially arrived, and will soon be in the hands (or more accurately, on the wrists) of millions of consumers, potentially in the range of 15 million to 20 million users. Naturally, some may already be wondering what kind of app ecosystem will flourish around Apple's newest toy. Specifically, what kind of apps are or will be available out there that consumers can use with their newly purchased Apple Watch devices?
It may still be too early to determine how consumers will actually embrace the Apple Watch, but a few educated guesses can be formed based on what app developers are creating now for the device, and also on what is trending as observed by app store analytics firm App Annie.
When Apple launched its Apple Watch App Store yesterday, it claimed that it already had more than 3,000 apps that work with the wearable device. This is confirmed with App Annie's data, which as of yesterday, counted an exact 3,061 number of apps -- a start which is certainly not bad.
Some of the apps for the Apple Watch are just extensions of existing iOS apps, which developers just tweaked for use on the wearable device. But based on App Annie's data, 29 percent of the apps on the Apple Watch App Store are built exclusively for use with the smartwatch.
With the way the Apple Watch is generating interest for smartwatches in general, the device is also manufacturing buzz for smartwatch apps. Indeed, 10 percent of apps live now include the word “Watch” in their names.
With regards to the categories of apps now going live, App Annie's data suggests that the Utility category leads the way (12 percent share),followed by Games (10 percent), Productivity (8 percent, Lifestyle (7 percent), and Health and Fitness (7 percent). All these categories make up 46 percent of all apps in the Apple Watch App Store. Other categories like Catalogs and Books, Weather, Photo and Video, and Medical are not so copious. The Medical category actually overlaps a bit with the Health and Fitness category.
The numbers and percentages shown earlier only represent the distribution of the more than 3,000 apps now live in the Apple Watch App Store. They do not actually reflect which apps will Apple Watch users actually buy. Diligent as always, App Annie is already starting to collect the data regarding this matter, and we should get some results in the weeks or months to come.
