Today Apple is expected to unveil its new Apple Watch (finally), but six months ago it wasn’t clear to everyone why Apple announced their newest product so early. So that same day in September I wrote this blog post about why Apple might have announced their newest product so far in advance, from a marketing strategist’s perspective.

Post originally appeared on September 9th, 2014 on MattHurst.com:

Soon we’ll know for sure why Apple waited to fully release the Apple Watch, but so far most of the strategic reasons I wrote about back then still hold up. In fact reporting since the original announcement has shown that the holiday shopping season was the original launch target for the Apple Watch, so whatever Apple shares today should to demonstrate real improvement and polish beyond what was introduced six months ago. More importantly, Apple has succeeded at stealing interest in competing smartwatches and wearable tech products over the 2014 holiday shopping season, as consumers waited to see what Apple had to offer in “early 2015”.