Apple Watch Received Estimated 1 Million Pre-Orders in U.S. on April 10

[AppleScruff1]

"health tracking and steps" etc.

Power of data collection is formidable and addictive.

When I takes off the Apple Watch and put on the Rolex, I lose the data for the duration.

At some point it is a decision what's "worth more"? The data? Or wearing a Rolex?

I'd never get addicted to how many steps I've taken, calories burned etc, to the point where I had to have the information 24/7, but that's just me. If I like the Rolex, I wear it. Not because it's a Rolex, but because I like it. If I wear a suit with a vest and use an antique pocket watch on a chain, I do it because I like it. If I get an Apple watch, I'll wear I because I like it, not to completely replace what I have. Choice is good.

 

[ninethirty]

You don't buy a Rolex because you have a need to tell time. There's all sorts of other reasons, and those will never go away. I'll wager though that none of those reasons are ever going to end in the purchase of a $350 smart watch costing 50x the price because it's made out of gold instead.

I was prepared for the possibility that Apple might have released something that would see me putting some of my nicer watches in a drawer for a while. I'm not happy that that's not the case, but it isn't.

If we're talking about whether or not the Apple Watch is going to send Rolex the way of the pocketwatch, the answer right now with current offerings is not a chance. When the next one comes out, I'm happy to look at the situation again.

Rolex could go the way of pocket watch (or any nice mechanical piece for that matter), where the market won't expand in the very future and then decline and becomes a niche player in a very limited market place.

I mean that could happen if existing watch wearer and new generation prefer Apple Watch over traditional mechanical watches that just tell time, for their wrist, and don't find watch collecting a worthy hobby anymore.

Just saying it could happen. To myself I am holding off buying another Rolex until I have given Apple Watch enough chance to determine for myself if a Smart Watch (with little collector value) is going to occupy my wrist 100% of the time, and if I would still have an appetite wearing a piece of traditional watch for any occasion going forward.

The fitness/health tracking aspect may be the game changer.

 

[racer1441]

And by stagger, you mean stagger it in your favour! How convenient that is. Will you be happy for the US to be 2nd tier to China, it China ever eclipses US sales? Mrhhh I think not.

The current system is fair and does not make important markets feel like secondary ones. This is an essential element to Apples growth plans.

No, i would be fine with any order, as long as the order date was actually on sale, not pre ordering for a unknown date.

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So they should have started in smaller markets and only expanded to the U.S. when they were ready to meet demand.

I'd be fine with that, because you would atleast have a date, not an imaginary potential date somewhere out there in the future.

 

[k1121j]

They forgot to count the one I ordered so it's actually 1,000,001

 

[bawbac]

It is amazing to see the effort people are going to just to try and help people not buy a product or repeat endlessly why they aren't buying it. Lol

Yet Apple continues to make products that us "Suckers" keep buying and loving it. The craftsmanship is second to none for related companies. People keep buying Apple products and keep succeeding and the suckers are paying the price. Pun intended. I love the products. All of them. I'm successful because of the products. I'm the most successful sucker. my life and my career is successful because of Apple Products. I wouldn't buy any other brand.

Every one of us has things in our house or home or garage that are guilty pleasures. Anyone who says they don't is lying.

My gawd, the effort people are going to just to say why they won't buy the watch is laughable. Don't buy it. Move along.

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Don't you understand? The people here are trying to help you by saying you are a sucker or idiot and why it isn't worth it. They are only trying to help you. that's why they are here all day. They only want to help you.

Look at me!

 

[Judas1]

1 - No and nor does Rolex - 60% mark up on those. About 90% on the steel ones.

2 - Yes probably for a few generations - the strap connections are very thin and will allow the watch to become progressively smaller over generations

3 - They are backward compatible with an adaptor. I use a few still.

4 - People that don't understand Lightning never will. It's incredible adaptable and programmable - USB C could have been the solution. But it was 3 years away and we'd not have had phones as thin with the chunky 30 pin. Lightning is not going anywhere for 5 years at least. I suspect Blueooth 4.2 - 5 and other wireless tech will take over in the future.

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Er... no. Samsung have hundreds of paid Schills. Many of them frequent here. Easy to spot. Normally very short, abusive responses. Less than 2 sentances and very little actual comment. And they post hundreds of them.

Also you have to remember the psychology of people. They will MOSTLY only bother commenting about something when they have something to complain about.

Tripadvisor is a prime example of all this. A few bad reviews can destroy a hotel and there are often negative reviews posted by other local hotels. It's insane thinking. Just makes people think that the entire city is a *****hole full of arrogant hotel owners. It's the internet. Believe nothing.

There's no paid Samsung shills here on macrumors. The only thing close are Apple "shills" because this is an Apple site, so there is an Apple slant. I don't know if you understand business, but companies pay reviewers to praise their own products. I have never seen a company pay people to **** on other companies' products because at the end of the day, people would still not know about their products. The so called shills here are just people that aren't brainwashed.

 

[01silver4]

I considered a Citizen Eco Drive diving watch that included a depth meter and was good down to 200 meters. No I would never dive that deep. It's a margin of safety. The Citizen costs about $700 list or about $500 street. For that money I would get a watch that never needs charging because it runs off light. I would get a watch I might wear a few times a year for diving or swimming. For a little less, I chose the black aluminum Apple watch. I can pay for my coffee in the morning by waving my wrist at the card reader. I get notifications and can see what they are without digging for my phone. This thing might just allow me to bury my phone in my backpack and all I ever use is my bluetooth earbud for talking and my Apple sport watch for viewing notifications, texts, etc.

There is no right answer to whether the Rolex or the Citizen is worth more. It depends on usage, hence my decision to go with the lower end Apple watch. I'm risking less up front investment but I really do expect to be delighted just as I have been with most other Apple products I've owned. Notable exceptions are Time Capsule and Airport Extreme but the reason wasn't about quality, it was about my preferences. I also went to the local jeweler to look at Rolex watches, new and used, not that I seriously considered them as an option. I just wanted to get an idea how they look and feel. When I tried the Apple watch on at the Apple store last Friday, I didn't get the sense it was "cheap" or "plasticky" compared to either the Citizen or the Rolex. Will it be a collector's item? I don't care. I care if it works for me now and I expect it will work for me now and work well.

I used mine for beach days and few occasional scuba diving. When I am in the Florida keys. And I will continue to use it for that. Love this watch, I ordered the 42mm SS. And the apple watch will be of great significance for my life style. Being that it will perform well for what it was designed for.

 

[DrJohnnyN]

Whoop!!

 

[Keirasplace]

Even businessinsider did quote these numbers, so maybe call them as well with your info. /s

Saying Business Insider quoted something means nothing, they'll quote ANYTHING that will bring clics, I mean ANYTHING : they are the king of clickbait. The article may be truth or not, but finding it on Businessinsider won't tell you that .

 

[r0k]

Whoop!!

You did spell my name correctly and provide my address for shipping, right?

When I was in the Apple store for my try-on, I asked them if they could give me an Edition as a loaner until my black aluminum watch came in. Somehow they didn't see the logic in my request.

I hope you enjoy your watch!

 

[Keirasplace]

iPhones have become accessible to the general public due to carrier financing. It's an anomaly, but shows what you can do if someone else is subsidizing your product.

Q: does Apple still get a revenue slice of a device's service plan? That's what it was in the early days - did that go away when carrier exclusivity went away?

A loan is not a subsidy, easier, cheaper credit than a credit card maybe, but that's it.

The carriers knows you, your previous credit and your current payment history, offers a service many can't go without and can ruin your credit and sick the collectors on you, if you don't pay the terms. For them, those phones loans are a relatively low risk proposition.

Carriers actually make money off this whole deal, they push clients into higher data/service than they need (making you believe that data actually costly to them (it is not)) and charging a not so low interest rate too, on the whole thing too. If you can find money in some other way (margin of credit or a low interest credit card), it is better to finance the phone yourself and choose the minimal service that you need.

T-Mobile actually now has clearly separated the loan part from the service part on people's bills. But, that's just a technicality; most, like me and my friends, knew they were getting a loan. No secret there.

 

[flat five]

whoop!!

shit!

 

[OneMike]

Decent sales I guess

 

[RyanFlynn]

haha i ordered the top 2 choices.

 

[ZCT]

I never said they did, or should. I was responding to someone who appeared to be saying that we couldn't say that there was a big margin on the Edition watches because we didn't know exactly how much gold was in them. I'm saying that even if they were 100% solid gold without any electronics there's a LOT of profit in them. And that's to be expected.

I think we might need to run an Business 101 class for MacRumors members, because I hear this word banded around a lot: 'profit'

If Apple make a gold watch for $2000 and sell it for $10,000, this does not EVER mean than they made $8000 profit.

First off Apple spent some three years figuring out the hardware. Then there is the manufacturing process, distribution, advertising, retail and any number of other factors.

Anything from the design of the Watch display cases in the stores, to the cost of cleaning the floors and installing said display cases are a cost.

Apple has spent a fortune on getting from the Apple Watch being a mere concept to where we are today. And every single Apple Watch purchaser will need to buy the watch for a mark up so that Apple can recover all the money it took to get to this point.

Apple are following a lengthy tradition among watch makers who charge a substantial premium for making their watches out of a material that costs a lot such as gold or platinum.

I don't pretend to know how much profit Apple make on their gold watches. But I see the bigger picture. Developing the Apple Watch cost $X. They will sell many watches for a total of $Y. If X>Y then Apple will have little incentive to keep working on Apple Watch 2.0. And for that matter, if Apple don't make a lot of money out of this, it could hurt all manner of future products and innovations.

Frankly though, if people are stupid enough to spend $10K to $17K on this watch, then I'm fine with it, even if Apple do make obscene profits. Consider it a redistribution of wealth. The 1% buy the Apple Watch Edition, and the rest of us get better products as Apple reinvests that profit to make their other products and future products better.

 

[mightyjabba]

I think we might need to run an Business 101 class for MacRumors members, because I hear this word banded around a lot: 'profit'

If Apple make a gold watch for $2000 and sell it for $10,000, this does not EVER mean than they made $8000 profit.

I never said anything of the kind! But compare a watch that costs $2000 to manufacture and sells for $10,000 with a watch that costs $100 to manufacture and sells for $400. Presumably other costs like design, development and so forth are more or less equal between models and can be ignored for our purposes, so that's a huge profit margin for the Edition, no? Why is this a controversial thing to say?

 

[dontwalkhand]

Whoop!!

Is that an Android phone or just the Gmail iOS app?

 

[ZCT]

I never said anything of the kind! But compare a watch that costs $2000 to manufacture and sells for $10,000 with a watch that costs $100 to manufacture and sells for $400. Presumably other costs like design, development and so forth are more or less equal between models and can be ignored for our purposes, so that's a huge profit margin for the Edition, no? Why is this a controversial thing to say?

Because nobody on this forum knows what the total cost to product the Apple Watch is from beginning to end, we don't know all the expenses involved in development, research, retail, marketing, distribution, POS, and so on.

I daresay that there is a healthy margin on the Edition, and I don't care, because most people will not be Edition customers. But if the sale of the Edition does make a bunch of profit, which in turn means that we the consumers of the 'ordinary' watches are being partially subsidized by those who buy insanely expensive gold versions, so be it.

I guess the point I am making here is that a team of highly intelligent and capable people at Apple have probably looked at all the costs, revenue and profit of the whole Apple Watch project.

Just because you think you've 'calculated' the cost of the gold in an Edition, doesn't mean you get to make definitive statements of profit margins on the Apple Watch. There are too many unknown variables for the average person to figure out.

 

[flat five]

I never said anything of the kind! But compare a watch that costs $2000 to manufacture and sells for $10,000 with a watch that costs $100 to manufacture and sells for $400. Presumably other costs like design, development and so forth are more or less equal between models and can be ignored for our purposes, so that's a huge profit margin for the Edition, no? Why is this a controversial thing to say?

not necessarily a huge profit margin.. but yeah, huge profit.

apple (more likely than not.. everybody else does though) doesn't just give you the materials for the cost they get them at.. they profit off them.

say their margin is 20%
$100 worth of materials goes to the retail for $120
$1000 worth of materials goes for $1200

same profit margin but they made an additional $180 profit by selling more expensive materials.

that said, there is possibly an additional luxury profit being added to the edition.. i doubt they're using the same calculations on the gold watch as they are the rest of them with the only difference being cost of materials..

i also imagine the edition is going through some of it's own manufacturing processes.. like, the dudes at the factory aren't going "hold up on the aluminum for a minute.. lets pour a batch of gold in for the next run".. so special machinery for small run items adds more cost per item.


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ADD

Presumably other costs like design, development and so forth are more or less equal between models and can be ignored for our purposes

and no.. that can't be ignored.

for one, the edition did have it's own design/dev/training/security/marketing/etc.. so that's specialized cost right there..
and again, like above with the machinery example.. the edition will sell in relatively low numbers so the price per unit with things like design/development/etc will be higher..
it would be a lot higher if it were the only apple watch available.. the fact that there are cheaper versions which will sell in much higher quantities is actually bringing the cost of the edition down.. but they're definitely not going to just say 'hey, we have some lower priced alternatives so lets just throw in the r&d for free on these bad boys.

 

[mightyjabba]

Of course we can't know what their exact costs or margin is. But I think it's safe to say that margins are huge. (And that's to be expected with any luxury item.) As to whether Edition customers are subsidizing regular edition customers, I don't think so, or rather I hope not. If Apple can't make a profit on the normal editions of the watch, something has gone terribly wrong.

 

[mightyjabba]

say their margin is 20%
$100 worth of materials goes to the retail for $120
$1000 worth of materials goes for $1200

same profit margin but they made an additional $180 profit by selling more expensive materials.

The Edition is essentially identical to the normal watches, with the exception of that it is gold -- all other costs, including marketing, development, logistics, etc. should be almost the same as with the other models. So the difference in cost for Apple is the price of the gold -- let's say $2,000. Since they are presumably making a profit even on the $600 stainless watch, it stands to reason that those other costs have to be less than $600. Anything above that falls under the "luxury profit."

Again, it's not a criticism -- just an observation. If Apple can get people to pay these prices then it'll prove it was a good idea.

 

[CB1234]

There's no paid Samsung shills here on macrumors. The only thing close are Apple "shills" because this is an Apple site, so there is an Apple slant. I don't know if you understand business, but companies pay reviewers to praise their own products. I have never seen a company pay people to **** on other companies' products because at the end of the day, people would still not know about their products. The so called shills here are just people that aren't brainwashed.

So how much did Samsung pay you to dish Apple shills on here?

 

[flat five]

The Edition is essentially identical to the normal watches, with the exception of that it is gold -- all other costs, including marketing, development, logistics, etc. should be almost the same as with the other models. So the difference in cost for Apple is the price of the gold -- let's say $2,000. Since they are presumably making a profit even on the $600 stainless watch, it stands to reason that those other costs have to be less than $600. Anything above that falls under the "luxury profit."

Again, it's not a criticism -- just an observation. If Apple can get people to pay these prices then it'll prove it was a good idea.

i get it that it's an observation.. and i also understand the logic path you're on.

but really, the edition watch is basically its own product.. it's not the same thing as a 4core macpro vs a 12core mac pro.

if they were doing the same thing with the macpro as they're doing with the edition watch, the 12 core macpro would cost $120,000.. but it's not because the quad and 12core really are the same thing.. they're assembled side by side on the same machines etc and the only difference is which cpu to pop in there.

that doesn't happen with the watch.

 

[mightyjabba]

that doesn't happen with the watch.

In what ways does it not happen like that? Not trying to be smart, but I think one of the ways that the Edition is kind of genius is that it lets them utilize all of the other R&D work they did on the regular edition and (more or less) just change up the materials used.

 

[flat five]

In what ways does not happen like that? Not trying to be smart, but I think one of the ways that the Edition is kind of genius is that it lets them utilize all of the other R&D work they did on the regular edition and (more or less) just change up the materials used.

i said it earlier but again.. it's different in a lot of ways.

all the watches aren't built on the same machines (whereas the macpros are).. you don't just mill gold in the same way you do aluminum..

say a watch building machine costs $10million dollars.

watch A will sell 10million units so $1 to go through the machine
watch B will sell 100,000 units so $100 to go through.

watch B is 100x more expensive to make during this process.. and this is only one of a lot of scenarios.. probably 50 of these type of scenarios with the gold watch..

another example.. i highly doubt the gold watches just sit in a box next to the others on the shipping palette.. special handling, lower volume.. higher cost.


say photographing/imaging costs $1million per item.
item A needs to recover 10¢
item B needs to recover $10

and on and on and on

====
but why you're thinking "oh, all the costs are being recovered by the high volume sellers therefore, apple shouldn't charge for those things on the high end items" is beyond me..
in fact, the high end items are even more of a business opportunity to profit off of r&d and whatnot..