It seems like many people are completely confused about 1) luxury and 2) luxury watches.
1) Does Apple make luxury products?
As someone has already said, luxury is mutually exclusive with mass market.
You could describe Apple's iPhones and MacBook Pros as being high-end of the mass market.
But anyone who really wants to buy an Apple product can buy most of the products except for the Mac Pro.
In contrast, a luxury car or a luxury bag are items that many people aspire to have, but not everyone can reasonably buy.
Sure, you might be able to buy a $10000 bag from Hermes or a $1500 casual shoes from Christian Louboutin, but it's not quite as accessible or justifiable as a laptop or a phone purchase.
That is not "luxury" in my opinion although that's really more semantics than anything else.
2) Will Apple's wearable be a luxury device (luxury watch)?
Once again, it depends on what you mean by luxury watch.
But the quintessential entry level luxury watch is a Rolex Submariner, which costs around 8000 US dollars.
An entry level "high-end" watch from a brand like Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, Breguet and A Lange & Sohne costs more than 10,000 or even 15,000.
For sure, Apple is not going to be releasing a device in that category because Apple is an electronics company.
But given their hires from YSL, Tag Heuer, and Burberry's, it seems that they may charge a little more than what the Android devices are charging.
This could be in line with what Apple has done in the past with pricing some of their first gen high quality products in new categories (first iPhone was quite a lot more than average phones and Mac Pros still remain expensive).
Still, given the product cycle of consumer electronics devices, anything above $1000 would be hard to justify.
Like most of Apple's products, battery performance will degrade over time and Apple will release new products every year or two.
Above $1000, it is difficult to get many people to line up at the Apple store to buy.
Therefore the product may either be subsidized (by whom it's unclear since insurance company reimbursements are complex and I don't think Apple store geniuses are equipped to deal with insurance companies) or it should be around $300-$500.
$500 is still a lot more than what all the other Android devices go for and it's possible that like the original iPhone, Apple is not looking to sell as many as possible with the first gen device.
Ideally, for people to gobble up this device like they do with iPad or iPhone, the price for this device should be either lower or it should do something that everyone really wants.
It's just speculation at this point, but my bet is that this device will either be around $400 or if above $500, it performs some functions that no other smart watch does.
