If the rumors are true, Apple may unveil a wearable device along with its new iPhone at an event on Sept. 9.
But will that wearable be the long-rumored "iWatch," a wrist-based smartwatch built off Apple's iOS mobile operating system that aims to take on challengers from Google, LG, Motorola and Samsung? If it isn't the iWatch, just what will Apple CEO Tim Cook and his team introduce in the wearables market?
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Recode reported Wednesday that Apple's first wearable might make debut with the iPhone 6 -- rather than at a product event expected in October. But Recode carefully avoided calling the wearable the iWatch and didn't make any mention of a smartwatch. That suggests Apple's wearable plans may still be too cryptic to decipher.
So will it be a smartwatch or a fitness band, especially given the favorable and widely circulated mock-ups from designers like Todd Hamilton? Or will it be a device unlike any we've never seen before. Whatever it is, Apple, which hasn't introduced a product in a new category since the iPad tablet in 2010, needs to impress.
"Apple has kind of lost its mojo," says James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research. "But, Apple is a unique company, it's capable of making that kind of radical social change, not only possible, but desirable. And that's how it will get its mojo back."
But figuring out how to get people, now accustomed to carrying around a smartphone, to buy into a new mobile device can be a challenge. Samsung, which has led the charge by releasing more than half a dozen wearables in the last two years, has tried everything from round and square watches, to color LCD-equipped wristbands, to a headset that drapes around your neck. Other device makers like LG and Motorola have stuck to wrist-worn time pieces, for now.
Even Apple co-founder Steve "Woz" Wozniak said this week that wearables may be "a hard sell," though he thinks if anyone can convince consumers to covet a wearable, it's Apple. "Apple works very hard to produce exceptionally great products and doesn't quickly release things like a wearable," Woz told CNET News. "So if one is introduced I expect it to have a chance to set the direction and make the product category finally viable."
Apple doesn't comment on rumors or speculation and hasn't ever acknowledged it's working on wearable development -- though CEO Tim Cook has been promising "amazing" new products since last year and said at a May 2013 conference that the wearables market is "ripe for exploration." "I think from a mainstream point of view
