Apple begins releasing the first set of third-party Watch apps from AliPay, Evernote, Expedia, Line, NYT, Target, WeChat, WSJ, more
Apple begins releasing the first set of third-party Apple Watch apps — The Apple Watch is still almost a month away from shipping and 15 days away …
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands two weeks after Apple's category-by-category preview of Watch apps spanning productivity, finance, travel, shopping and news — the lineup that told developers what kinds of apps Apple wanted. Now the first actual builds from launch partners like AliPay, WeChat, Line, NYT, Target, WSJ, Evernote and Expedia are going live while the Watch is still weeks from shipping.
The sequencing matters: days later Apple threw the doors open to all developers with open App Store submissions, and by launch day the store carried more than 3,000 apps. This release is the curated vanguard — Apple seeding the store with recognizable names so the launch-day must-have list has marquee anchors.
First-order effects
- Launch partners Alipay, WeChat, Line, NYT, WSJ, Evernote, Expedia and Target get a head start on Watch presence and App Store placement weeks before any rival can ship.
- Apple gets to validate its WatchKit pipeline end-to-end — review, approval, distribution — on a controlled set of apps before opening submissions to everyone.
Second-order effects
- Competitors can't afford to skip the new surface: Google followed within weeks with its own first Apple Watch app via Google News & Weather for iOS, signaling that even Apple's platform rivals will build for it to defend their iOS audiences.
- Because developers built these apps without physical access to hardware, per their own accounts, the first generation clusters around simple glance-and-act extensions of existing iPhone apps — raising the bar that every late entrant must clear with less lead time.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, each new Apple platform launches through this same funnel: hand-picked partners first, broad submission second, thousands of apps at day one — making early partner selection one of the most valuable slots Apple controls.
- Watch apps debuting as companions to phone apps rather than standalone products sets the structural template for wearables software: the wrist is an extension layer of the smartphone ecosystem, not a separate computing market.
The trend: New Apple platforms now debut with a curated partner lineup before opening to all developers, concentrating early visibility in whoever makes the first cut.