71–80 of 80 posts
10 years from now Apple won't be a tech company, they will be an international luxury brand that creates products in many different areas. This is just the first step.
Of course, you're right that over time that will mean creating products in more and more different categories.
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I'm absolutely amazed that Gruber and the smart folks who read him have missed this. My dad has a Rolex. It belonged to his dad. My eldest brother will likely inherit it one day. That Rolex is a family heirloom. It's style is timeless (sorry) and it isn't going to run out of RAM or processing power anytime soon.
I think this angle might be overstated. Are heirloom purchases really what drives the $60 billion luxury watch industry? Or it it people like my boss and his boss -- "watch guys" who buy at least one high end watch a year? Or the very rich? Does Apple really need to target all the same people the current luxury market does? Or can the product be successful by targeting the many people who don't even wear watches? Whe…
Yes, the Apple Edition watch will likely suffer from the same obsolescence issues as iPhones, but as others have pointed out, that will only matter for certain types of buyers. The market for $20,000 watches is pretty small, and it's composed of different types of buyers. The smallest of the market is the group who can fork over $20,000 annually for a fashion accessory, rather than buying something as a milestone that will become an heirloom.
However, Apple can absolutely afford to build a very small number of Edition watches when selling at this price point, because the cost of materials is so low, and they'll sell tons of them at lower price points, which gives them the scale they need to justify production. This is where the correlation to the ubiquity of Rolex movements come in. Apple is using the same strategy. They have one "movement" (a computer in this case), which they're packaging to suit a very broad set of price points.
I think Apple will succeed in this endeavor because they have the brand. Rolex is, again, a very good comparison. In really uppity horology[1] circles Rolex watches are considered pedestrian because they are mass-produced, and they don't include a lot of hand finishing like the more prestigious brands. That doesn't appear to matter to the broad market though, because Rolex enjoys two logic-defying distinctions: 1) they sell many more watches than any of their upper-crusty close-kin, and 2) their watches hold their value in a way that defies their mass-production status. Sound familiar?
Apple products are often lampooned for selling at a price-premium when compared to similarly specified commodity alternatives, and Apple devices fetch strong pricing on the secondary market. IMO, Apple & Rolex are as close as we've seen to companies who have deconstructed and are in the process of perfecting the formula required to bring to market products that uphold these attributes. If Apple can do this successfully with watches, they will have upped the ante significantly by jumping from one vertical to another; a feat for which I cannot think of another example.
1: Technically, the science of timekeeping, but often used to refer to the community of people interested in timekeeping devices (watches).
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Are you suggesting that you never do business with people who wear Rolex? I don't know how that makes sense. I would never pay 5k for a watch but I do wear shoes which costs 1300$. That doesn't make me a bad person, just that I like to spend money on shoes. I can completely understand that someone may want to spend 5k on Apple Watch.
Would you pay $5k-20k for a gold-plated version of those shoes? Regarding Rolex (which I also feel are also overpriced antiques) they at least have a lasting value. They're often heirlooms passed down to children, partners, etc. A 100 year old watch is awesome. A 200 year old Rolex will be amazing, but possible. But I just can't imagine Apple supporting a first-gen iWatch 50-200 years after release.
For someone else, a gold plated watch designed by Apple is awesome. Everyone has their own taste.
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In the NewYorker Article, Jony made it clear that they considered a round face, but realized quite quickly that one of the principal functions of the watch was to deal with lists, which work much better on a rectangle.
Yeah, and Steve Jobs dismissed tablets in 2003 ("people want keyboards") and dismissed smaller tablets in 2010 ("the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps") and dismissed putting a screen on an iPod in 2004 ("It's the music, stupid"), and dismissed larger-than 3.5" screened phones in 2010 ("Nobody's going to buy that.") Ive has to say that rectangles are clearly the superior for…
I guess we'll see over the next few years.
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I have no problem with expensive goods, even gold watches. It's the part of "slap some gold on my Apple device" that is counter-intuitive. There's no way Steve Jobs thought "what we're really missing is a gold version". It's not zen. It's gaudy. The few extremely-successful people I've met that have impressed me have been very low key. Can you imagine PG wearing a gold iWatch???
There's a word for judging people by what they wear or how they look...
A $20k (or even $5k) gold Apple watch will be a litmus test for me - anyone I encounter will automatically be someone I wouldn't do business with. The idea of a gold Apple watch is akin to gold-plated cars / guns for drug dealers. The only value it adds it to show you have money. The fact that Apple would even consider it only demonstrate the corrosion of values and vision to me.
I'd also imagine guns for drug dealers have a more practical use case than conspicuous consumption.
This speculation is insane. An Apple watch is no mechanical masterpiece like luxury watches in this price region. No watch lover will pay such prices for cheap Chinese electronics. If Apple pulls that stunt, the are geniuses in marketing.
And I would disagree entirely with your argument. An iPhone [1] is truly a masterpiece of engineering and programming. An Apple watch will have a lot of that heritage, and will sell accordingly.
[1] I would classify most of the highend Android smartphones the same way.
Whereas even if there's some kind of upgrade program to prevent computer-part-obsolesence, nobody knows if smart watches will even be a thing in five years. Maybe in five years, Microsoft HoloLens will have blown away the smartwatch market to the point that every important wearable is glasses, not a watch. Or maybe they will be watches, but they'll have moved to a snap-bracelet deal where there's a much wider screen. Or maybe wearables will just be dead, dead, dead. Nobody knows.
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I'm absolutely amazed that Gruber and the smart folks who read him have missed this. My dad has a Rolex. It belonged to his dad. My eldest brother will likely inherit it one day. That Rolex is a family heirloom. It's style is timeless (sorry) and it isn't going to run out of RAM or processing power anytime soon.
He hasn't missed this. On several episodes of his podcast he and his guests have pondered whether the watch may have some standardised internal bay with upgradable innards, to keep it up to date year-to-year. Or just trade it in for the newest model, as the gold will be the most valuable (and reusable) part.
This speculation is insane. An Apple watch is no mechanical masterpiece like luxury watches in this price region. No watch lover will pay such prices for cheap Chinese electronics. If Apple pulls that stunt, the are geniuses in marketing.
Sounds like what the cellphone makers were saying about Apple when rumors of the iPhone began to circulate. And I would disagree entirely with your argument. An iPhone [1] is truly a masterpiece of engineering and programming. An Apple watch will have a lot of that heritage, and will sell accordingly. [1] I would classify most of the highend Android smartphones the same way.