Here's My Only Problem With Apple Selling Its Gold Watch for $4,000
I always had a feeling Apple was going to try and make its smartwatch as much a fashion-piece as it would be a piece of technology. I mean they did it first with the iPod and then iPhone, turning technology into fashionable things to carry around in your pocket. That being said, this piece of tech, you are actually wearing on your person and as I’ve mentioned before that makes it a completely different ballgame for tech companies.
In terms of price, I could see the gold Apple Watch being super pricey (and I have a feeling that Apple doesn’t plan to move a ton of its gold “Edition” model), though $4,000-$5,000 is certainly a lot of money and raises one real concern for me from a consumer standpoint. My main concern about smartwatches, especially for Apple, is if they do in fact charge that much for a gold Apple Watch, what happens when they release a new model next year?
Other luxury watch companies such as Rolex (which doesn’t offer smartwatches) may release new products but those new products don’t automatically render the previous model or its other products “obsolete” (from a tech standpoint). The watch will still function as a watch, it still will keep great time, and look good while doing it. Now, granted you could argue the same would be true about a generation-old Apple Watch, but with each new release, the Apple Watch will continue to get thinner, sleeker, and offer additional functionality and features. And of course, there’s the software. How long will Apple offer software updates to its Watch? I love my iPhone and I love iOS, but there’s no question that the newest version of iOS always runs best on the latest iPhone.
You know next year when the Apple Watch 2 is released alongside updated Apple Watch software, the original Apple Watch is going to suddenly seem slow and unresponsive.
What it really comes to down is, people tend to keep jewelry for longer periods of time than say, a smartphone. Why? Because things like nice watches and other forms of jewelry are typically investments that are bought not that frequently — at least, certainly not as frequently as you buy a new iPhone (once a year? once every two years?).
Fashion is a tricky business. Apple products have a lot of sex appeal, there’s no doubt about that, but in my opinion, the sex appeal for an Apple product pretty much immediately disappears once the next model is released. Then, the new model is the sexy, cool thing to have.
Is Apple really going to be able to change people’s watch buying habits? If any company can do it, it’s probably them, but at $4 grand for a gold watch that won’t be the talk of the town next year — you have to ask yourself: is it worth it?