The biggest company in the world has launched its newest device, but the reception has been muted compared to previous launches – deliberately so
The Apple Watch was made available to order on Friday, with the company’s attempt to discourage customers from camping outside Apple Stores proving largely successful.
At 8:01 on Friday morning, London’s major Apple stores in Regent Street and Covent Garden had bare pavement outside – a far cry from the bustling scenes greeting the company’s last major device launches, the iPhones 6 and 6 Plus.
But Angela Ahrendts, the company’s retail chief, won’t be sad at the lack of a scrum, having advised customers directly that online was as good as offline. “To provide the best experience and selection to as many customers as we can, we will be taking orders for Apple Watch exclusively online during the initial launch period,” she said in a press release.
Those stores (as well as the Apple outpost in the Selfridges department store) do have one unique draw: the only units of the solid gold, £8,000 Apple Watch Edition available to try on in the whole of Britain. Customers will still have to book an appointment, in slots of up to 15 minutes, using the company’s website, before they can put the 18-karat slab of gold on their wrists, however.
No other city in Britain will have any units of the gold watches available to try on (or even look at) in-store, leaving the watch – Apple’s attempt to compete with traditional watchmakers tendency to sell expensive solid-gold watches to the super rich in the West and abroad – a London-only prospect for the time being.
That’s not to say would-be buyers can’t pre-order the watch in other cities, though. But they won’t be able to try them on before they buy them, meaning they may as well have stayed at home. As Ahrendts made clear,the Apple Watch isn’t available for pre-order directly in any Apple store, with the company moving to an all-online system: customers are able to try on the watch (including the Watch Edition, in the three London stores), but then have to use in-store iPads to pre-order them.
As for the gold Apple Watch, the hefty price tag doesn’t seem to have put off buyers. Pre-order now, and the earliest it will arrive is this June.