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Chinese Model Hints at Fashion-Oriented Advertising Push for Apple Watch
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Most of the fashion industry is fickle, but not all of it. There are examples of evergreen designs that have sold season after season: Gucci handbags and Armani suits on the high end, Tom's Shoes and Ray-Bans on the low end, Dieter Rams' Braun watch in the midrange. All of these get small updates in their details, but the basic design language remains the same. I suspect the aWatch is going to be like that. The next design update will look largely like the 2015 version, but thinner.
I think you've changed history.
All products "asian" in the 80s were considered "cheap". Now, not at all. It's the electronics manufacturing region of the world and considered "high quality".
Back in the 80s products made in the US, UK and Europe compared to Asia were considered to be high quality.
Asian products weren't as trusted for quality. But that all changed.
In the case of Japan is was not Sony is a great company along side Toyota. How can one use cheap labour and compete with European, American and Japanese brands? I posted this earlier and it was taken down.
ha. ok
I like george/seinfeld better anyway.. just wanted an excuse to add zoolander to the thread.
No worries, lol I like zoolander also, I wasn't serious
Z2 they have started reading scripts again...Japan brought "automation" to the world in its manufacturing. They could produce more, at faster rates with less people. The cost of the actual resource was not as relevant as in the US or Europe due to these innovations.
The emerging Asain markets took the automation and added low cost resource to take over manufacturing world wide. Albeit with American influence and money.
Prediction / advise:
Apple -- this will be bigger than we think. The watch will be cool again. SDK delayed til the summer after first units ship with mass user feedback.
Google -- the Wear platform becomes successful dispute itself with the momentum of Apple haters and the mass production juggernaut of Samsung and Sony. Casio also does a Wear watch.
Microsoft -- the "Windows Watch" comes out in the fall allowing a single tile in the display accessing any single Windows Mobile app shown in the tile scroll of your device. Performance will suck.
Pebble -- they dodge the 800 lbs gorillas moving in by "taking the low road" with a $95 smart watch. We will not see a color OLED Pebble watch for a long time.
Apple -- this will be bigger than we think. The watch will be cool again. SDK delayed til the summer after first units ship with mass user feedback.
Google -- the Wear platform becomes successful dispute itself with the momentum of Apple haters and the mass production juggernaut of Samsung and Sony. Casio also does a Wear watch.
Microsoft -- the "Windows Watch" comes out in the fall allowing a single tile in the display accessing any single Windows Mobile app shown in the tile scroll of your device. Performance will suck.
Pebble -- they dodge the 800 lbs gorillas moving in by "taking the low road" with a $95 smart watch. We will not see a color OLED Pebble watch for a long time.
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Not quite, sorry.
Ford brought in the Assembly line. Japan automation and robotics.
I'm not talking about electronics. Electronics from Asian companies have been great for a while now. I am specifically talking about watches. When was the last time you saw a high end digital watch before smart watches? Never. Thats why smart watches won't sell. They're still seen as cheap, but the price tag isn't.
When Apple sells 5-10M, including 2M+ of the top models, the first year, be sure to tell Apple it doesn't sell and hey won't make money from it...
The inventor of the cell phone, Martin Cooper said "People were dazzled by the concept! It was beyond imagination, that more than half the people in the world would have these phones." People were "just spellbound" they "couldn't imagine how this little phone could reach more than halfway around the world, and talk to their mother, who actually answered the phone. Sophisticated New Yorkers were standing there with their mouths open."
He visited with the vice president, George H.W. Bush and showed him this new phone, and he was so taken by the phone.
He said, "Well, I have to show this to Ron." And the next thing you know he was showing it to Ronald Reagan. And Reagan asks, "What's keeping us from having this?"
In 1973, Martin Cooper changed the world, although he didn't know it yet.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/07/09/cooper.cell.phone.inventor/
It all seems very similar to the comments people are making now about Apple's Watch.
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By definition, fashion is fickle. Timeless designs are, by definition, not fashion.
Not sure the point you're making. When does "never" dictate the future and how product may or may not sell?
A digital watch is not a smart watch. A smart watch truth be told just like smart phones pre iphone/android really aren't that smart.
If the watch brings convenience and adds a better experince to the phone then it will sell. It will sell a lot.
People won't see them as cheap if enriches the iPhone experience and if the carriers "bundle" phone and watch into the plan then it's a done deal.
All of that is true, the only thing that makes this watch different is that apple isn't trying to sell to just a select few because they mass market in huge numbers into the multiple tens of millions, with that in mind. How many fashion conscious people will enjoy seeing their watch on every other person they run into on the street?
I'm pretty sure Gucci bags and Armani suits are not something someone would buy if everytime they turned around they would see them everywhere.
If you intended that as an insult, I don't think it has the impact you hoped it would have. As it turns out, adults really love their toys, and if Apple can reimagine the features of a smart-watch and implement them in a manner which is both fun (and I emphasize the word 'fun') and easy to use, then they will have my money.
No insult intendent ..... I'm just trying to state that in the current form it is of no use for me, even as a toy
I'm sure it will sell though.
That's why you'll have hundred of different bands eventually to go with probably eventually 2-3 body types with dozens of high quality ways to wrap the body eventually (customizing the shell so to speak). Adding to that, whatever face you want to put on.
The ease of changing the band is one of the best design decision of this watch, if they could make it just as easy to change the body wrapping, the number of possible watches would be astronomical (and I don't doubt they're working on that too). You could even get cases and bands with made to order variances.
Swatch built on whole company based on variance of a few design for very simple watches.
BTW, The highest build quality watches, like the gold one, would not be able to be replicated easily or inexpensively by swaping the body. So, they would retain their cachet.