Apple is apparently hiring more employees for its wearable technology efforts to address issues that will likely push the rumored iWatch launch out to the end of 2014. Sources said Apple has been aggressively hiring new employees for its smartwatch project over the past few weeks, adding to its already growing pool of wearable tech engineers.
Sources speaking with Financial Times said Apple went on the hunt for new talent to help overcome "hard engineering problems that they've not been able to solve."
The idea that the iWatch won't ship until later in 2014 has already cropped up thanks to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. He noted in May that the company needed to update iOS as well as the iPhone and iPad to take advantage of the iWatch's features, and that required more people. He said,
Apple may not have adequate resources to develop an iWatch version of iOS because it may require big changes to iPhone and iPad iOS this year. For these reasons, we think mass production of the iWatch is more likely to begin in 2H14, not 2H13 as the market speculates.
Adding to the notion that a smartwatch is coming, Apple recently filed for a trademark on the iWatch name in Japan and other countries. Company CEO Tim Cook has also said that Apple has some "amazing new hardware" to introduce throughout the rest of 2013 and 2014, leading to further speculation that the iWatch is on the way.
If Apple really is hiring new engineers to work on the iWatch project, development can't have progressed far enough for a launch before the end of the year. To hit that type of deadline, the hardware design would most likely have already completed and production tests would already be underway.
Assuming the information that's leaking out of Cupertino is correct, it looks like we won't be seeing iWatches show up in time for the holiday buying season -- at least not this year.