So much has been written about the new Apple Watch – in the mainstream press, in the watch press, and in the tech press. And I haven’t been immune. I wrote about the thing for my client, Beckertime here and here.
Well, people are starting to actually get theirs now and I got curious. What was really driving the people who were strapping them on their wrists? So I joined a Facebook Group focused on the Apple Watch and decided to simply ask them.
I got some answers that surprised me – but really, they shouldn’t have.
But let me back up. As a mechanical watch fan, you can say a lot of things about the Apple Watch:
- It has an estimated half-live of about 18 months, then it’s outdated/ obsolete/ superseded/ etc. Definitely not a legacy piece to hand down to your kids.
- The battery life is short – 18 hours – before the watch needs to be plugged in.
- It doesn’t look like a watch – other smart watches do.
- It will simply fail. Who wants a watch with the above listed flaws?
But these miss the point on a few different angles. First, the watch is already a raging business success. It’s a several $Billion business for Apple already.
Second, this is not a watch. It’s a piece of consumer electronics gear.
Third, and these points are what I learned from my informal, admittedly non-scientific survey on the Apple Watch Facebook group:
Many of the Apple Watches being purchased are going to Apple geeks who buy everything Apple releases – iPods, iPhones, computers – and now the Apple Watch.
Many purchasers are early adopters. They’re going to buy most anything that’s right out of the developer’s lab, assuming it appeals to them in the first place.
Now, an important point here is that the Apple Watch is typically NOT replacing another watch on the wrists of wearers. A typical statement was something like, “I haven’t worn a watch in years, and I love wearing this one.”
If it’s replacing anything, the Watch is replacing a FitBit or similar fitness/ exercise monitoring device. Only occasionally did I hear it was replacing an actual watch. And if it WAS, that watch was an inexpensive timepiece – typically in the same price range as the Apple watch. Only one purchaser reported also owning a Cartier.
More often I heard that purchasers had not previously worn a watch. One went so far as to say he was not interested in a “single function device” like a watch which only supplied the time.
The above anecdotal data makes me think luxury watch companies, and even some mid- and low-range companies have little to fear from the Apple Watch. They do not seem to be competing at all.
A final note: I also asked if anyone had purchased an Edition, the solid gold version, priced between $10,000 and $17,000. I found it interesting that no one responded to that question for several two hours (that’s when the smart-ass answers started flowing).
That kind of response leads me to believe Edition purchasers are not like other Apple Watch purchasers. The typical Apple customer sees a watch (of any sort) as being an object that costs a few to several hundred dollars. That’s it. To them, $10,000 for a watch is absurd, even comical.
I’ve seen projections of ~40,000 units a year for the Edition. That’s pretty low for a consumer electronic device – which is what the Apple Watch is. And willingness to spend five figures on a watch may be the single point of commonality between a typical luxury watch wearer and one who wears the Apple.
No, I don’t think luxury watch manufacturers have anything to worry about from the Apple Watch.