
Apple buying a third of world’s gold to meet demand for iWatch - ethana
http://www.mining.com/apple-buying-a-third-of-worlds-gold-to-meet-demand-for-iwatch-14071/
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zyxley
"A third of the world's gold production", not "a third of the world's gold".

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swamp40
Yes, 1/3 of the annual production.

That's also assuming 1M/mo sales and 2 troy oz per watch, neither of which (I
believe) are very accurate.

Still a shocking amount though, even at 1/10 those numbers.

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Gustomaximus
Cost: 62 grams @ $38,735 per kg of gold is $2,401

Volume: At 2,767 ton mined 2013 this equated to 44.6 million watches sold in a
year to take a third of production. This vs. around 170 million iPhones sold
in 2014. Guessing twice as many have iphones this is about a 15% take-up + a
growing market.

Volume wise, Apple could easily sell this many watches if it's really good.
But a gold version that's going to cost $2,401 in gold alone, plus if Apple
did buy this much gold the price is sure to increase. So we would have to be
talking a $3,000+ watch that needs replacing every 2 years...hmm I'm skeptical
about this.

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mkempe
Rolex gold watches contain 2-3 oz of gold (depends on the model and year).
Rolex sells 0.5-1 million watches per year, I don't know what proportion of
that are gold watches.

So if Apple Watches are a golden success, they will have to buy a lot of gold
indeed, but not one third of mined output. Annual production is about 80m troy
ounces, 50% of which is used in jewelry. [1]

[1] [http://www.numbersleuth.org/worlds-
gold/](http://www.numbersleuth.org/worlds-gold/)

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mkozlows
The whole point of that Tidbits article was "the WSJ is probably wrong,
because the idea that Apple would use 1/3 of the world's gold is an
absurdity." Treating a reductio as if it were a proof is just deeply silly.

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sambeau
"His estimations — admittedly based on the Wall Street Journal predictions,
not official figures"

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sambeau
"Apple _may_ soon buy up one third of the world’s gold"

