Watch bands tend to be a major new release every spring for Apple. Even when there isn’t a major hardware announcement, we’ve always been able to count on bands being refreshed. So far this year, we’ve gotten one new watch band in the form of the Unity band to celebrate Black History Month.
It’s a beautiful watch band and it uses the same fluoroelastomer compression molding process to form a unique multi-color design as last year’s pride band. So far, Apple has reserved this process for special edition sport bands.
But we’re getting to a point where each year Apple releases slightly different colored bands. It almost feels like they’re about to run out of new colors that feel truly unique. Now is the perfect time to take the compression molding process and apply it to the entire lineup.
‘Molded Sport Band’
Not everyone will want a multi-color sport band, so rather than replacing the existing ones they could introduce it as an all new band collection called the ‘Molded Sport Band.’ In traditional Apple fashion, they could also upsell these bands at a slightly higher price that lands in between the braided solo loop and the existing sport band to offset the cost of the compression or injection process.
I’ve mocked up a few different designs based on existing colors in the sport band lineup. Unsurprisingly, mixing these colors looks really good. I particularly love the orange and white combination. Customers would also be willing to pay the slight premium for a cool or funky-looking watch band that could set their watch apart from others.
As you can see, the sport band takes on an entirely different look and feel when you mix colors together. Even existing colors can get a new lease on life. There are endless combinations too. It also gives Apple fresh runway to create new collections of sport bands even with discontinued colors.
Why stop at watch bands?
I’m not even sure how Apple would be able to implement a similar molding process for iPhone cases, but just imagine how cool matching molded multi-color iPhone silicone cases would be. I’d imagine cases might need to be injection molded rather than compression molded. They could even do pride phone cases for the first time if they chose to head in this direction.
What do you think about Apple updating the Sport band and silicone case with molding? Let us know in the comments below!
