

Apple Watch in stores on April 24, high-end version costs $10,000 - sytelus
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/09/us-apple-watch-cook-idUSKBN0M50WC20150309

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Cookingboy
At $10k it's one of the cheaper solid gold watches out there. I'm sure for
quite a few wealthy people in China $10k is a perfectly fine price point for a
disposable tech toy with some cool features.

What surprised me was the price for the bands for the stainless steel version
of Apple Watch. Sure a link bracelet from Omega would run you upward to $1000,
and I'm sure Apple's one may even match Omega's in quality, but an Omega watch
starts at $6k minimum, which means a band costs at most 15% of the price of
the Watch.

Where as in Apple's case those bands are priced at 40 - 80% of the price of
the watch they are meant for, that's...very uncommon in the watch world.

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mmxiii
Good point, people were speculating that the innards would be swappable, but
actually it looks like the model is that you keep the band, but swap the
watchpiece.

So when V2 comes out in 2 years, you keep your $400 band, and just pay $500
for the watchpiece.

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kayone
>people were speculating that the innards would be swappable

Yup, totally sounds like something apple would let you do.

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pcurve
18k rolex gmt gold has about 5.3 oz of 18k gold, or about $4,700 worth. That's
with full gold bracelet and body.

[http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc18/gaijinnv/Rolex18K_09...](http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc18/gaijinnv/Rolex18K_09MAY08.gif)

I would be shocked if the most expensive Apple watch had more 2oz of 18k gold
or roughly $1,750 in value.

Apple won't sell too many gold ones and they know it.

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holycrapwhodat
> Apple won't sell too many gold ones and they know it.

China.

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puranjay
OP clearly doesn't know India and our gold obsession. Wealthy Indians will lap
it up. We are still the largest consumer of gold by a huge margin.

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_nedR
I thought that the debut of smart-watches were supposed to transform the watch
industry and consumer attitudes towards it (where a watch's useful life can be
anywhere from 5 to 50+ years).

Towards that goal, A 400$ watch with a life of 3-5 years sounds like a
reasonable proposition, but 10,000$ for a watch with the same obsolescence is
frankly ridiculous.

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yaeger
The title is a bit misleading. The sports watch edition starts at 350. What I
would consider "high end" are the ones going from 800 to 1000, I think.

What this title suggests are "High End" at 10.000, I would consider "Luxury
End". The 10 grand ones come in 18k Gold casings. I would really rather call
that "Luxury" instead of "High End"...

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_nedR
I am talking about the Luxury market.

At that price range you are competing with luxury watches, which will still
retain their value 10, 20, 50 years from now.

But with this smartwatch you're investing 10,000 usd in something that will be
outperformed and obsoleted by a 350 usd watch in 2, maybe 3 years and reach
end-of-Life soon afterwards. Are there people who are still willing to pay for
such a device. Sure(Think the Vertu crowd). Are they a big enough market to be
worth the trouble. I am not so sure.

