That was never my point. There was never 'classes' of Apple products. Now there is. And no it will not be the same. Different materials make a different product. Metal, glass, etc.
apples other products share no such distinction. Hence my anaology.
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The Apple Watch Price ****-Fit Thread
- Thread starter JayLenochiniMac
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That was never my point. There was never 'classes' of Apple products. Now there is. And no it will not be the same. Different materials make a different product. Metal, glass, etc.
apples other products share no such distinction. Hence my anaology.
I'm going to need to see some proof of your "industry insider" status before I believe that, sorry. Especially because you claim to work with the motor industry, yet everything else you say in your post as a criticism of Apple is exactly what the motor industry has been doing for many years. Since you brought it up, let's look at cars:
Audi A1: from £14315. Audi R8: from £93735.
Mercedes A-class: from £20715. Mercedes AMG GT: from £97195.
BMW 2-series: from £22355. BMW M6: from £92340.
All of these do the same thing: they are capable of getting you from A to B in a safe manner. The extra performance of the high-end models is totally irrelevant to the vast majority of people, since all the above cars have a rated maximum speed that's over the UK speed limit. In fact, the more expensive cars may be pretty impractical for most people. So, why do people buy the higher-end cars? There's no functional advantage unless you do track days (which 99% of people will never do). Answer: perceived quality and perceived style.
In technology up to now the price of the item has been directly related to its specification (processor speed etc.). This is not the way the rest of the world works: see above re: cars, a cheap coat will keep you just as warm as a Versace one, a cheap watch will keep just as good time as a Rolex. With the watch, Apple are doing the same thing as every other industry does: having different models that do essentially the same thing at different price points so people can buy which one they want based on how much they value quality, materials and style. Am I going to buy an Apple Watch Edition? God, no: I don't have that sort of disposable income and in my opinion you'd have to be mad to spend that much on a watch anyway. Am I going to buy an Audi R8? No, same reason. Are Apple evil for giving people the option? Are Audi? No, of course not.
What, technology will go down in cost over time as economies of scale come in and components get cheaper over time? I could have predicted that, maybe I'm an industry insider as well.
When you trotted out that one the little remaining credibility you had pretty much disappeared.
Did you miss the Apple watch demo? it has almost identical functionality as your iPhone.
Functionally the Apple Watch is an iPhone accessory. It'll be used like a gadget and seen like a gadget. Jewelry lasts a lifetime or even generations and keeps its resale value where as the Apple Watch is disposable technology obsolete within 1 years time. Pricing from 1.5x-6x (sport & watch models) the competition A) leaves Apple in a position to get undercut badly B) drastically shrinks the market and C) kills the year-over-year upgrade cycle that generations Apple profit. Apple's main market is the average consumer that is okay paying slightly extra for a better product, not a consumer that is so loaded that they don't even look at the price tag. It's an Apple product so it has great media hype so of course people will be interested because of said hype + brand name and that'll fuel launch day sales. However when they realize the functionality is almost identical to their current smart watches and the yoy upgrade cost hits them, the sales will plummet.
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What, technology will go down in cost over time as economies of scale come in and components get cheaper over time? I could have predicted that, maybe I'm an industry insider as well.
When you trotted out that one the little remaining credibility you had pretty much disappeared.[/QUOTE]
Well first off your luxury car analogy has not bearing on what I was talking about. Secondly as much as you want it to be a 'luxury' item and not a 'gadget' does not make it so. It is based on technology, so it is a gadget and will have obsolescence built into it. A BMW does not have the same problem. It you take care of it, it will function for 20plus years. A good mechanical automatic swiss will also or longer. The Apple watch will not.
Well to me in my world your never appeared in the first place. So if my steve comment 'disappeared' your whole argument 'disappeared' as well. Nor for example did it dawn on you that the apple watch is the first product totally 'post steve'. That is disturbing in itself. Nothing wrong with the product, its great. Its the execution of presenting the product itself, price, user classes etc.
To me what you are saying is total and utter nonsense in the marketing world. I will give you a little pointer, you cannot run a tech company like a luxury company like rolex, or BMW. Different 'lanes' for each product. The same rules do not apply to these companies. The watch industry, the car industry, and the tech industry all have different marketing schemes and rules built into the product they are selling on how to market and sell each product.
Ok. Can I give you proof. Probably not without jeopardizing my business.
Here is a little morsel. Just happen stance. Or good prediction. I think not. This is over a year ago. Long before such rumors existed.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1700295/
I have many others on here but most just go by the way side. This is by choice, I want my comments to fly under the radar.
Go to howardforums.com and look at posts from my user name. From 8 or 7 years ago. You might want to go to the archive since I have not posted in a long time on there. About 4 years to be exact but what I did predict came true about %90 percent of what the wireless industry is now. When Nokia reigned and blackberry flourished. Now it is not just me predicting this but my business that I own and operate.
This is not rocket science. Most in the industry in my field has access to the same info. Some of the most known ones are more verbal and outspoken to promote themselves. We do not do this.
Comparing Apple to a Car company a luxury one at that proves my point exactly. Apple is turning into a luxury company. That was and is my whole point. That point apparently flew over your head. Way over. There is a reason they hired Ahrendts for retail. Now if they are getting into the 'luxury' business that is fine.
Of coarse it's a criticism of Apple. For going against the core values that Steve relied on and built the company on long ago. If you don't think he would be turning in his grave you don't know Steve or Apple. Build the best products, not the most luxurious or for different classes of people. This is not what Apple is portraying with the class warfare so to speak with the prices of the Apple watch.
No not costs going down because of scale. But a price adjustment. There is a difference between the two. One that you apparently did not understand.
Apple was never a 'luxury' company based on materials or different class points or try to cater to a certain crowd. Never has and should never be. I take it you are young or don't know Apple very well or have not been using their products to see the difference here.
A 10000 Apple should not exist. Big mistake on their part. Yes will they play to the rich crown, the Lexus crowd, Mercedes crowd. Yes. Should they, no.
They have always been about making the best products with the best materials at a price point that is attainable to mostly everyone, regardless of age, social status, wage. If you make minimum wage you can afford a iphone. College kid you can get a iphone. Single mother you can get a iphone.
Can these people buy a $400 dollar accessory? Probably not. If you want a all steel watch it will cost your a thousand dollars. If you can't afford it you have to buy the inferior one with cheaper materials for essentially the same product. Apple in their history never did this. That is creating 'classes' of consumers. That is the problem.
This once again flew over your head. I play in a realm you simply do not understand. That is okay. I don't know how a doctor does surgery. That is his specialty. Marketing is mine.
Do you have to agree with me, no. Believe me no. But listen to and watch this video and then tell me you agree with what they are doing now. They have lost this and gone away from this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keCwRdbwNQY
Build the best products. Period. This is Apple at its core. Not the most luxurious. You just don't get it. And since you don't you never really understood apple in the first place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mKxekNhMqY
When you trotted out that one the little remaining credibility you had pretty much disappeared.[/QUOTE]
Well first off your luxury car analogy has not bearing on what I was talking about. Secondly as much as you want it to be a 'luxury' item and not a 'gadget' does not make it so. It is based on technology, so it is a gadget and will have obsolescence built into it. A BMW does not have the same problem. It you take care of it, it will function for 20plus years. A good mechanical automatic swiss will also or longer. The Apple watch will not.
Well to me in my world your never appeared in the first place. So if my steve comment 'disappeared' your whole argument 'disappeared' as well. Nor for example did it dawn on you that the apple watch is the first product totally 'post steve'. That is disturbing in itself. Nothing wrong with the product, its great. Its the execution of presenting the product itself, price, user classes etc.
To me what you are saying is total and utter nonsense in the marketing world. I will give you a little pointer, you cannot run a tech company like a luxury company like rolex, or BMW. Different 'lanes' for each product. The same rules do not apply to these companies. The watch industry, the car industry, and the tech industry all have different marketing schemes and rules built into the product they are selling on how to market and sell each product.
Ok. Can I give you proof. Probably not without jeopardizing my business.
Here is a little morsel. Just happen stance. Or good prediction. I think not. This is over a year ago. Long before such rumors existed.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1700295/
I have many others on here but most just go by the way side. This is by choice, I want my comments to fly under the radar.
Go to howardforums.com and look at posts from my user name. From 8 or 7 years ago. You might want to go to the archive since I have not posted in a long time on there. About 4 years to be exact but what I did predict came true about %90 percent of what the wireless industry is now. When Nokia reigned and blackberry flourished. Now it is not just me predicting this but my business that I own and operate.
This is not rocket science. Most in the industry in my field has access to the same info. Some of the most known ones are more verbal and outspoken to promote themselves. We do not do this.
Comparing Apple to a Car company a luxury one at that proves my point exactly. Apple is turning into a luxury company. That was and is my whole point. That point apparently flew over your head. Way over. There is a reason they hired Ahrendts for retail. Now if they are getting into the 'luxury' business that is fine.
Of coarse it's a criticism of Apple. For going against the core values that Steve relied on and built the company on long ago. If you don't think he would be turning in his grave you don't know Steve or Apple. Build the best products, not the most luxurious or for different classes of people. This is not what Apple is portraying with the class warfare so to speak with the prices of the Apple watch.
No not costs going down because of scale. But a price adjustment. There is a difference between the two. One that you apparently did not understand.
Apple was never a 'luxury' company based on materials or different class points or try to cater to a certain crowd. Never has and should never be. I take it you are young or don't know Apple very well or have not been using their products to see the difference here.
A 10000 Apple should not exist. Big mistake on their part. Yes will they play to the rich crown, the Lexus crowd, Mercedes crowd. Yes. Should they, no.
They have always been about making the best products with the best materials at a price point that is attainable to mostly everyone, regardless of age, social status, wage. If you make minimum wage you can afford a iphone. College kid you can get a iphone. Single mother you can get a iphone.
Can these people buy a $400 dollar accessory? Probably not. If you want a all steel watch it will cost your a thousand dollars. If you can't afford it you have to buy the inferior one with cheaper materials for essentially the same product. Apple in their history never did this. That is creating 'classes' of consumers. That is the problem.
This once again flew over your head. I play in a realm you simply do not understand. That is okay. I don't know how a doctor does surgery. That is his specialty. Marketing is mine.
Do you have to agree with me, no. Believe me no. But listen to and watch this video and then tell me you agree with what they are doing now. They have lost this and gone away from this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keCwRdbwNQY
Build the best products. Period. This is Apple at its core. Not the most luxurious. You just don't get it. And since you don't you never really understood apple in the first place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mKxekNhMqY
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Forget the Moto 360. Look at the Huawei watch. It is a stainless steel watch with 42mm diameter and a sapphire screen. Heartrate monitor is supposed to be onboard as well. It looks significantly better than the Moto 360.
Nobody before in the watch industry would have done a watch like Apple did with such round candy store slick finish. It is odd that now that Apple does it people seem okay with it, when otherwise everybody would have laughed at such a round all over style decision, if it showed up in a magazin advert for some high end watch.
Let me state up front that I agree with you in principle, but Apple has released "luxury" products before, at least in terms of their price and availability. Case in point being the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh which was originally planned to be launched at a $10,000 price point and would have been hand-delivered and set-up by an "Apple Concierge". Even at it's $7500 launch point, it was three times the price of a similarly-configured Power Macintosh 6500.
Yes, the TAM ended up being a major market failure and perhaps that same fate will befall the
WATCH EDITION. However, Apple's sales protocols for the WATCH EDITION - limited to particular markets and retail facilities - implies that they understand this is a "luxury" item with a much narrower market appeal compared to the other WATCH models and are tailoring the marketing and sales process to reflect that market.But with the TAM, there was the PM 6500 at a third the price for those who could not - or could not justify - the price of the TAM. And Apple offers the
WATCH SPORT and WATCH families at significantly less cost - but with the same capabilities - as the WATCH EDITION.
Absolutely agree. Rather than shaking up the snobbish luxury market and democratizing it (as Apple has often done with markets) they've decided to collude with it. Apple's new guiding value appears to be "conspicuous consumption" (some might call it bling) rather than fostering genuine creativity.
You see there's nothing in an overpriced $17K bauble for the ordinary man to cheer for. Even the "poor-man's" consolation of blowing $1K of hard-earned cash on the steel model still won't bring any joy. It's a lot of money for it's buyer to part with, but in Apple's new "caste" system, they're still going to feel like untouchables. Lowest of the lows. Underachievers.
Absolutely agree with you on your last point.
Apple has entered the luxury market, with all its vanities and short lived fashion hypes. I'd have understood if they made an special edition from gold, platinum or whatever and had given the proceeds to charity. But now it's just about making more money.
How long until we'll see Edition iPhones, MacBooks, etc?
@iamthedudeman and the luxury discussion
I agree Jobs said Apple is about offering the best possible product first and not selling very good products while selling it under well tended fashion brand with according prices.
But in all honesty Apple has changed to being a fashion brand for a long time and a lot of their success does not come from their product quality but from how their brand is perceived in public.
Compare it to a car company. It is not about building the best car anymore. It is about building something most people want and selling it backed by a brand people that aren't into cars will pay for. Their success comes from being able to sell high quality to a wide range of people that would otherwise not care enough about techy stuff to pay for quality.
If most other companies like Dell designed some high quality product they would sell very little volume to some tech enthusiasts and needed a high price just to break even at all with the design cost.
Apple appeals to the english teacher who is overwhelmed by the task of finding the on switch, they sell relatively expensive notebooks to young women who would buy their notebook based on color otherwise or whatever the sales person pitches to them. There success is that they are a fashion brand that is just cool and whether Hollister clothes are good quality or not they mostly sell for the money they charge because people think it is hip and they are cool if they have it.
Personally I think the whole idea of a smartwatch is overhyped. So many young people don't bother with watches anymore. I literally only have a watch for heart rate tracking and nothing else. For that task the wrist offers poor accuracy. According to some testing these wrist based trackers are only good at relatively low intensity levels but not very accurate during an actual workout. A breast band with electrodes is still far better.
The only people who likely are intrigued by that new smartwatch trend I think are primarily the typical fashion victims who buy watches not for the practical value but because to them it is status symbol. Even if other people think less of them just because they look like superficial people who need status symbols.
In that sense for Apple to market these watches the way the people most likely interested are used to be addressed at. If the whole thing takes of, they are in for a huge pay day. If it fails, it will probably not fail so dramatically they cannot still sell it off as a moderate success and or most of the industry will have copied them and failed with them. Then they just blame smart watches and find the next better thing. I think they have too high expectations but will see.
Most of their money comes from iphones but their price is largely hidden by the subsizing model. Personally I don't see why I should pay 1500 for a phone when an almost equal one can be had for 300 with all contract fees for two years included. But people seem accustomed to high contract prices and the 100 or 200 on top don't really matter in that case. The watches will not be subsidized, so they have to prove their value like tablets. If they fail as luxury fashion gadgets, which they should if people were sane, they got a hard argument to make for the cost with that little value.
I agree Jobs said Apple is about offering the best possible product first and not selling very good products while selling it under well tended fashion brand with according prices.
But in all honesty Apple has changed to being a fashion brand for a long time and a lot of their success does not come from their product quality but from how their brand is perceived in public.
Compare it to a car company. It is not about building the best car anymore. It is about building something most people want and selling it backed by a brand people that aren't into cars will pay for. Their success comes from being able to sell high quality to a wide range of people that would otherwise not care enough about techy stuff to pay for quality.
If most other companies like Dell designed some high quality product they would sell very little volume to some tech enthusiasts and needed a high price just to break even at all with the design cost.
Apple appeals to the english teacher who is overwhelmed by the task of finding the on switch, they sell relatively expensive notebooks to young women who would buy their notebook based on color otherwise or whatever the sales person pitches to them. There success is that they are a fashion brand that is just cool and whether Hollister clothes are good quality or not they mostly sell for the money they charge because people think it is hip and they are cool if they have it.
Personally I think the whole idea of a smartwatch is overhyped. So many young people don't bother with watches anymore. I literally only have a watch for heart rate tracking and nothing else. For that task the wrist offers poor accuracy. According to some testing these wrist based trackers are only good at relatively low intensity levels but not very accurate during an actual workout. A breast band with electrodes is still far better.
The only people who likely are intrigued by that new smartwatch trend I think are primarily the typical fashion victims who buy watches not for the practical value but because to them it is status symbol. Even if other people think less of them just because they look like superficial people who need status symbols.
In that sense for Apple to market these watches the way the people most likely interested are used to be addressed at. If the whole thing takes of, they are in for a huge pay day. If it fails, it will probably not fail so dramatically they cannot still sell it off as a moderate success and or most of the industry will have copied them and failed with them. Then they just blame smart watches and find the next better thing. I think they have too high expectations but will see.
Most of their money comes from iphones but their price is largely hidden by the subsizing model. Personally I don't see why I should pay 1500 for a phone when an almost equal one can be had for 300 with all contract fees for two years included. But people seem accustomed to high contract prices and the 100 or 200 on top don't really matter in that case. The watches will not be subsidized, so they have to prove their value like tablets. If they fail as luxury fashion gadgets, which they should if people were sane, they got a hard argument to make for the cost with that little value.
I think it was a 100 year m240 or something.
Maybe I was off. Anyway if not 37k certainly Leica have pushed out plenty at 17-20k
What was the price of the quick shot m9 which was designed by Jonathan Ives, 1.8 million? That was for an auction but it was an already massively overpriced camera at 7k for the body.
They will sell the watch editions. Probably sell them out and sell the sport well. They'll recoup more profit margin from the stand stainless steel edition to make up for lower than average profit margins on the sport edition.
As for contract prices.
My iPhone six plus was $299 and my contract went up from contract free $10/month for two years. $540 for the iPhone 6+
I'm sure the non contract fee is still padding for contracts unfortunately they don't get much cheaper than $80 for two people on any carrier. Let alone one with decent service.
Point in all this is I'm personally at odds. I'm a shareholder and have been for a long time. So I hope it does really well. The price of the watch would be fine if the stainless came with a leather band I suppose. I would guess that's the change they make if they don't sell as many as they want. The premium for normal people line gets a leather band probably the traditional buckle
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I disagree. For $349 you get the same functionality as someone who spends $17,000. Plus, Force Touch has made its way to the MacBook line, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it in the iPhone and iPad in the future. The stainless steel models are priced comparably to other mainstream watches from brands like Movado, Omega, and Tissot.
I think it's very relevant. Also, it's not just luxury cars: even "cheaper" car manufacturers have high-end models, e.g Nissan GT-R, plus as I said multiple industries already work like that (clothes, accessories, watches).
Sounds like the Palm CEO after the iPhone introduction. That worked out really well for Palm.
Patronising and wrong, on both counts.
Not sure where you live, but there are plenty of people in the UK (and the rest of the world) who can't afford an iPhone. Or a Mac Pro, or a Retina iMac, or a Macbook Pro. The only reason you see so many iPhones (and other expensive smartphones) is because of carrier subsidies and people paying off the handset cost gradually over time: if everyone had to buy the handset up front there would be a lot less sold.
No, I understood your point: I just think you're wrong. I don't think Apple have a responsibility to make all their products affordable by everyone (they already aren't, anyway). To say they are creating some sort of class war with the watch pricing when anyone who can afford an Apple Watch Sport is already better off than the vast majority of the people on the planet is, frankly, ridiculous.
Agree, Apple products have traditionally been more expensive than others, and were and are not affordable for everyone. To own something Apple already put you in a certain class of its own. Well, never came across that Apple was an advocate for a class-less society. But you usually got what you paid for - an above industry standards high quality product. Value for money.
With the Edition, I just don't see it. You pay way and above the added cost for the more expensive materials used in what essentially is the same product. Only added value: "I'm rich".
Poor choice for a company that set out to change the world.