For Apple, watch straps are proving to be a surprisingly lucrative line of accessories.
The company sells a wide variety of bands in fabric, silicone, leather, and steel for its Apple Watch, aware that fashion-conscious users like to mix things up from time to time. Prices range from £49 for a colourful silicone strap all the way up to £849 for the Hermès Noir Swift Leather range.
Perhaps mindful that third-party accessory makers can and do undercut its official products, Apple is researching something harder to replicate: a watch band that can change colour to the owner’s tastes.
The newly granted patent describes a watch strap with “electrochromic features”. Fabric is woven around filaments that include a “conductor and an electrochromic layer” which can change colour when an “applied voltage” is administered.
A single band could show “a variety of colours”, the patent says, allowing buyers to match their watch to their outfit, but it could be for more than just style points.
The patent suggests that the Apple Watch could trigger a colour change in lieu of a notification. This could be subtle — the strap flashing green when you fill your fitness rings, for example — or a bit less coded, with the technology capable of displaying “particular icons, shapes and/or text by illuminating certain elements in a particular way”.
That assumes that this is a patent that ever gets made into a commercially available product, of course. Apple patents many things, and there are plenty of things that have yet to make it to a commercially available product.
Even so, it might seem strange that Apple — which has made a virtue of how easy it is to switch bands — is even researching a way for Apple Watch buyers to make do with just one strap, given it has the potential to kill off the revenue generated from those that like to accessorise.
But it seems unlikely that this would be bundled with the watch itself and, as an optional accessory, if it ever happens, it will likely be on the expensive end of the spectrum. Maybe not up there with the Hermès Noir Swift Leather collection, but a nice little earner for Apple, nonetheless.
