The Californian technology company revealed full details of its smartwatch range, including a luxury range that starts with a solid 18-carat gold version for $10,000
Apple will make its entry into the world of high-end fashion with a solid 18-carat gold Apple Watch costing over $10,000.
Uncharacteristically for the company, Tim Cook gave the price of the Apple Watch Edition as “from” $10,000, with no corresponding price at the top of the range, but the company’s website reveals that it can rise to $17,000 when bought with the “modern buckle”, a strap containing a chunky solid-gold clasp.
The mid-tier Apple Watch, by contrast, starts at $549, but can rise to double that, $1,099, with the larger screen size and most expensive watch bands.
Despite being made from solid gold, few analysts had predicted a price of more than $10,000 for the watch. A poll of Guardian readers pegged the likely price at half that: $5,000. Some observers guessed even lower, around $2,000–$3,000, based on reports that the company was employing a new method for making gold alloy, using ceramic particles, which required 28% less gold by volume for an 18-carat.
In the end, the company appeared to base its pricing on comparably high-end analogue watches. A rose gold Rolex costs $18,000 (£12,000), while a similar Omega watch, set with diamonds, can be as much as £24,000.
But unlike those watches, which are designed, and often explicitly advertised, to last long enough to pass down to one’s children, the Apple Watch will eventually be obsolete, replaced by newer models.
Some thought that the company may have announced a way around this problem, either offering the ability to upgrade the internal components, or to trade in the old watch for money off a new one. But no such programme was announced, suggesting that the advice in the future to owners of a newly obsolete £13,500 watch will be the same as it is to owners of a newly obsolete £600 phone: suck it up and buy a new one.