Pricing Prediction
People who own high-end watches expect, and do, pay $300-$1,000 every five years to overhaul their watches. This includes disassembling them, cleaning them up, replacing any damaged parts, and so on.
If Apple did reach into the $5,000+ market with the Edition line, they could offer "trade in and upgrade" program. You'd be able to upgrade your Edition every to the newest model every, say, 2 years, for $500. This would be in line with the current high-end watch market. Apple would recycle the gold in the old device to recoup part of the cost.
This would make people more likely to view an Apple Watch Edition as an "investment" (i.e., something with long-term value), rather than a disposable piece of consumer electronics.
Plus, the math could work out nicely for Apple. Hypothetically (these are laughably incomplete figures---just a proof of concept):
Selling Price of Edition: $5000
-Standard Watch Price: $350
-Additional Cost of Gold: $1000
=Profit on Initial Sale: $3650
Upgrade Cost of Edition: $500
+Earnings from Recycled Gold: $900
-Cost of Production of New Edition: $1350
=Profit on Upgrade: $50
Actually no.
Servicing of a gold watch from a Patek/VC/AP takes a very long time (could be as long as 6months) and the basic service does not include replacement of parts.
If there are scratches or dings on the gold case, they would simply polish it or leave it.
If they were to provide new parts, that would be a very significant cost.
Basic service for a uncomplicated watch should cost a little more than 1k usd but for complications, it costs more.
A full new gold case I guess would cost in the 5-10k, if not more so really there is nothing in high end watch world that resembles what you say.
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Ya, I'm just doing some pure speculation.
Then again, I'm a guy who sees hubolt as a lower quality AP.
So when I think "time piece" I think high quality from a company that has a history in that segment.
I just can't get my head around the idea of how a watch made in china from a tech company could be compared to the work of an established Swiss watchmaker.
I know a Lexus LFA is a good quality car that uses fine materials and performs very well, but it's still a Lexus and at a price of 375k, I'd rather have a Ferrari that has a long history in the segment.
They only way apple can charge the 5 to 10k price people are talking about is if they actually make a very limited number of these watches.
But even then, people who buy limited edition luxury items like a la Ferrari, Mclaren f1 or p1 know they car is going to become and instant collectors item and be worth more than what they paid for.
The fact that the edition watch offers no extra utility and is going to devalue considerably more than any other watch at a 10k price point makes me think of a gold honda civic selling for 200k. If that's the case why wouldn't apple just make a gold iPad and charge 75k? Or a gold version of all their products?
But again, it's all speculation and well see when the prices are announced.
Yeah this is why I don't think the price will be anywhere near 10000.
For 10000, apple just cannot be a compelling proposition, except as a show off photo on Instagram by some super rich young person.
Now for 5000, it will have a broader audience, but still it would probably feel too expensive to most wealthy people who regularly buy watches above $10k because they know it's a rotten deal that will become worthless in a few years.
At around 3000-4000, it starts having some value since it will be one of the cheapest gold case watches and it becomes an attainable status symbol for those who are not wealthy and an interesting novelty watch for even high end watch owners, albeit one with very poor resale value.
For less than 3000, i think there will be pretty significant demand as it reaches territory of lower end mechanical or battery watches whose innards are nothing special anyway.
