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Apple Watch is like an invasive weed says Gartner

Cupertino invades ecosystems and out-competes defenceless incumbents

Analyst outfit Gartner has likened the Apple Watch to the invasive Kudzu vine, an Asian plant that has become a pest around the world.

Kudzu's survival strategy, says analyst Robert Hetu, relies on its ability to find deep water with carbohydrate-rich roots and a habit of growing vines and leaves in triplicate to give it redundant resources that crowd out competitors.

Apple, Hetu says, put down deep roots by tapping consumers' precious music collections. The company then unfurled touch-screens to put other smartphones in the shade. Apps and the iPad represented incremental evolutions that slower-developing species struggled to match.

Hetu says Apple Pay and the Apple Watch are Cupertino's new invaders, with the latter gadget set to “further revolutionize how consumers are influenced to purchase and their paths to making purchases.”

“Apple continues to find ways to connect and make itself indispensable to consumers,” he says, and retailers in particular need to come to grips with the new species that will arrive in their environments.

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