What Can the Apple Watch Do For Your Skin?
More Americans own smartphones than have attended college classes. So, it’s no surprise that when a new “Smart” device comes along it’s a big deal. Still, even by the standard of Y2K-sized hype, the buzz around the September 9 announcement of the Apple Watch, which comes out in the fall of next year at a starting price of $350, was enormous. It’s sort of like 1999 in the wearables category: There are a lot of open questions, and nobody knows what’s going to happen the day the ball (err, watch) drops. Wearables could become a $12.6 billion business by 2018 (Business Insider’s estimate) or a $50 billion one (Credit Suisse analyst Kulbinder Garcha’s estimate). On the other hand, they could fizzle completely. Here’s what we do know: the Apple Watch, like other fitness wearables, will track calories burned, your heart rate and any movement—and that’s just the beginning, considering third-party apps will enhance its capabilities (like they did the iPhone). Apple wants to make you healthier, but could the device also make you more beautiful?
Parham Aarabi, founder, chief executive officer and chairman of ModiFace, a developer of beauty and photo-editing apps, thinks so. The Apple Watch has infrared sensors that he says theoretically could scan a wearer’s skin and assist in the collection of information about skin problems or tone. “The biggest advantage of the Apple Watch is in the sensor that it has and the data that it collects,” says Aarabi. “If it can look inside your skin and really analyze your skin with a level of detail and find out what product you might need, that could be game changing.” Skeptical about the level of detail the Watch could capture, he adds this caveat: “Right now, I don’t think anyone not inside Apple knows exactly how they work and what they could do.”
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Not one to mince words, Jean Michel Karam, the scientist founder of the skin care brand Ioma and an expert in mechanical sensors, called the possibility of portable digital devices giving credible skin care diagnoses a “joke.” The expense of putting sensors into wearables able to produce accurate skin measurements is too high. He estimates that, to make sensors viable to place in devices, they have to cost less than 50 cents, and the price of precise sensors is way above 50 cents. For instance, Ioma’s anti-aging Youth Booster product contains a sensor in its packaging that consumers can use to assess skin hydration. “This kind of sensor you can’t have for less than $1. It is impossible. The raw material costs you more without factoring in research,” says Karam. He does admit, however, that digital devices are valuable skin care tools in some regards. Through an app, Ioma suggests when customers should lather on its Cell Protector SPF 50 based on the strength of the sun’s ultraviolet rays, but the app capitalizes on data that’s already available, not on taking its own UV recordings on a device.
Related: Do You Care What Your Fitness Tracker Looks Like?
Karam might argue that wearables aren’t good diagnostic instruments, but that won’t stop beauty brands from using them to sell products. In fact, Aarabi believes that the main benefit for brands will be that the Watch makes buying faster. “Now someone goes to a Walgreens, finds a lipstick, goes to the counter, gets their credit card, and has a new lipstick,” he says. “With the Apple Watch, that can change. They can try out new lipsticks on the iPhone and see what they like, and the next time they are care close to Walgreens, they get a prompt on their watch that the lipstick is available, and they tap their watch and pick it up,” he says. “You can do almost the same thing with phones, but the watch makes it a little easier.” A purchase may only take seconds, and those are measurements you can be assured the Apple Watch will be adept at ticking off.
