126,800 Gold-plated Apple Watch, who will decide to start

Apple Watch, the latest news from the industry, is that Apple will open a trial appointment from April 10, and that when Apple Watch is officially on sale on April 24, employees at Apple's retail stores will also start offering fashion advice to consumers.

As for the sale of Apple Watch in April, I think there is a deep meaning in this connection. It is well known that summer is the season when many Bai Fumi and tall and handsome bask in the chest and bask in the muscles. And the arrival of Apple Watch, may change this traditional culture, it is likely that everyone no longer to show their breasts and legs for fashion, but to roll up the sleeves, Apple Watch inadvertently between the elegant bask in glory.

Of course, it's just some jokes. But Apple's smart watch has become the best target for domestic and foreign hand-Watch, especially the gilded Apple Watch, which sells up to 126,800, and is almost a "man with a lot of money" since the March 10 launch of Apple's new spring launch. , one of the most widely spoken jokes is that "the only benefit of the gilded Apple Watch is that we can easily distinguish the rich fool from the crowd."

It is easy to laugh at Apple Watch, the question is that buying high-priced Apple Watch must be a rich fool? Nowadays, too much discussion in the industry is focused on the gold watch. Although it is only a branch of the entire Apple Watch, it may attract people who cannot accept watches below X-million.

As we all know, Apple Watch has three series: Apple Watch Sport (10), Apple Watch (20) and Apple Watch Edition (8). Each series has 38 mm and 42 mm two case sizes, but all Apple Watch are functionally identical. Price, the lowest selling price of 2588 yuan, 18K Gold version of the highest price 126800 yuan, in fact, 18K Gold version should be for Apple to pull the brand influence, and the lowest section is the main market. However, when "18K Gold" "The highest price 126800 Yuan" "Apple produced" These keywords appear, my first reaction is that this real "tyrants gold" smart watch will become the new fashion, love the technology of the tyrants of the latest favorites. After all, the highest end of the 18k rose gold Apple Watch Edition version, in China, the price of up to 126800 yuan, which is also the test of the real trench or tyrants touchstone. In fact, there is a piece of jokes, even though it's a good illustration of the real buying audience of the gilded Apple Watch, "What is the consideration of China becoming one of the world's leading countries for Apple Watch?" "Because we heard that this far Eastern country has an old proverb: Poor play car, rich play table, fool than mobile phone, two forced to spell computer." ”

The luxury Apple Watch, in spite of the 18K gold, only covers a layer of gold on the dial. If this is left behind, the watch has the same accessories and functions as the 549-dollar "sibling": sapphire glass displays, sensors, and electronic chips. And just because a small amount of 18K gold, its price jumped up to 18 times times the latter. Just one more rose gold, may not be cost-effective, nor the slightest value of the preservation of the characteristics, but this may become a real rich class display personality and taste the best tool.

Just because too much discussion in the industry is focused on the Apple Watch of 18K, and everyone is curious, what kind of rich man buys such expensive watches? Instead, everyone will overlook the question of why Apple, which has always looked like "high cold", is doing something so "tacky". After all, 126,800 of gold-plated Apple Watch doesn't look like a product of equal value, it's more of a hype stunt. What about apps on Apple Watch? What is the application program at this press conference, can you make your eyes bright enough to use every day? At least not yet.

Smart watch the industry now looks crowded enough for Apple to be a late performer. But obviously the latecomers know something other smart watch makers don't know, and that's how the watch industry should play the game. Even with the gold version of a handful of people, Apple Watch is not as complex as the general cognitive technology: 38 of watches and straps that cover 16 prices. The iphone, MacBook, IPad and even the nearly vanished IPod have several different sizes of products today, but since Mr. Jobs returned to Apple, all of the new product lines started with a product, but Apple Watch's launch has chosen another unusual approach.

With different appearance pricing and learning marketing from the watch industry, Apple Watch has demonstrated a unique product strategy. We know that luxury in the fashion circle in the high-end brand advertising, will do their best to announce their exquisite production process, to identity, wealth, taste and other value-added to increase the user to wear them power. This time, Apple is ready to enter the fashion industry, and they seem to have done enough. Apple, for example, has pointed out that the 18K gold used by Apple Watch is different from traditional gold, which uses a gold material 2-4 times harder than conventional gold. But it was not Apple's first, as early as 2012, Hublot, a Swiss watch maker, had adopted its proprietary gold, called Magic Gold, a hybrid of ceramic and 18K gold, twice times harder than Apple's proprietary gold.

In fact, there are a few old news to ponder: Since 2013, Apple began to introduce several fashion industry executives. One of the first to join was CEO Paul Neve of YSL, the luxury goods company. Neve, who worked in September as the top director of "Special Projects" at Apple, reported directly to Mr. Cook, a project widely regarded as Apple Watch. In October, another luxury-goods executive, Burberry (Burberry) CEO Angela Ahrendts, joined Apple as senior vice president of Apple's retail department and into Apple's core management. Over the past eight years, Ahrendts has catapulted Burberry from a traditional old-fashioned windbreaker brand to a respected global luxury giant, with revenues rising from 2 billion pounds to 7 billion pounds. Apple executives have largely been able to enter core management after years or even more than 10 years of experience in the concentric management structure of the jobs era, Ahrendts as the first executive to join the management center. The appointment also shows Apple's importance to the Watch Apple in the fashion circle.

At Apple, Ahrendts and Paul Neve are expected to be able to drive and push through the ongoing shift, turning Apple from a consumer technology company into a fashion brand, putting its brand style ahead of its technology attributes. Because Apple's top brass believes that once Apple begins to focus on its style and brand, it will continue to create surprises for its consumers. After all, Apple has rarely been considered a luxury fashion brand in the past, and even in its popular mobile phone, Apple is just a budding smartphone brand. But this is not a sense of security brand attributes, in order to consolidate and enhance its brand attributes and content around the world, 126,800 of the gilded Apple Watch came into being, and thus brought Apple into a luxury and fashion brand ranks. Angela Ahrendts, Apple's retail director, has explained the idea several times in a media interview, so I am not surprised at the way Apple is performing such a luxurious fashion. After all, in the past eight years, Ahrendts successfully let Burberry from a British brand has become a worldwide fashion symbol, with the leading fashion industry strength. Its products have become a symbol of its culture and its own country, allowing it to have a leading position in the broad market and have higher brand value.

But there is also a seemingly insurmountable chasm, because in the ranks of luxury goods, ubiquitous phenomena will kill your brand. And if according to luxury goods, or fashion FMCG model pricing, of course, can get rid of Moore's law for digital products put on the "Price magic Spell." But so far no luxury company has been able to do 500 billion of dollars in volume. Their users are too small and picky, and once mass-produced, the price fence is gone. If you do not want to face the dilemma of stock price diving and investor censure, this is an issue apple must face. Of course, such "price inhibitions" are not absolute, such as Apple's 3.2 billion-dollar takeover of headphone maker Beats, which already has a relatively perfect answer to this question. As we all know, the headset in accordance with fashion pricing, in headphones this very small market to do 1 billion of dollars, this is the value of beats. If Apple's products are priced in a pattern similar to Beats headphones, Apple, which sells billions of iphones, tens of millions of ipads and Macs a year, will be the biggest luxury brand in history.

There are a number of cases like this, and Danish audio brands Bang & Olufsen ' s have been trying for years, as did Nokia's Vertu high-end handsets. Even in the automotive industry, there are such phenomena, higher-end luxury models, which enrich a brand's content and form a chain reaction that affects its more affordable models, such as BMW's high-end M series, will actually boost the BMW 3 's best-selling, which is known to many times as the "tech BMW".

It's just a start for Apple to watch an industry like the iphone and to take root in your life and sell it like a fashion brand. Meanwhile, Apple's smart watch may also spark a discussion of taste problems. On Twitter, the famous American media commentator Kevin Taylor throws a question: who is more valuable with a Breguet watch and an apple-plated watch? But he was thinking of the old-school aristocracy, with a little desire for quiet and more permanent things. The Apple Watch is the upstart: this is not to say that only you can spend the 10,000 dollars to buy a gold-plated apple Watch, but in the next few years, you can spend 10,000 dollars again to buy, which is the same as the rich choose to take first class.

According to industry forecasts, if three versions of Apple Watch in the first year of sales of 20 million, while the lowest-priced sport version of Apple Watch accounted for 70% of the average version of Apple Watch accounted for 29%, assuming that Apple Watch Edition, which accounts for only 1% of the 200,000-piece Apple Watch sold in a year, is not difficult. We can compare the sales of veteran watch makers. Swiss watches, which were priced at 3000 Swiss francs (about $3038 trillion) in 2013, sold around 1.6 million a year, according to Statista data.

How many rich people like this are there in the world? Let's just say, people who earn 75,000 dollars a year think it makes sense to buy a 349-dollar watch, and those who earn more than 2 million dollars a year will find it very rare to buy a 10,000-dollar watch, and now more than 100,000 people in the United States are earning more than 2 million dollars a year. As far as China is concerned, such rich people are afraid of more, and the Hurun report shows that by the end of 2013, the number of billionaires in mainland China reached 1.09 million, and that in the next 3 years, the number of tens of millions of Chinese billionaires could increase by 120,000, to 1.21 million. Of course, such numbers are irrelevant, and Apple Watch was designed to be a status symbol, not revenue, especially in the Chinese market, where Apple Watch more often as a gift, as a way of passing on identity.

The tyrants of Apple's watch will make Apple Watch a stylish luxury, and for the rest of the day, Apple can do more iterations and work with more partners to make Apple Watch more cost-effective. This is a very interesting phenomenon, the watch has such a clear social characteristics: touch-screen chat, crazy hints (especially with the pulse). It was designed to be two units in a group, and Apple Watch also asked for at least one iphone to match and its goal was to sell more Apple products.

Fashion, style now means everything, also contains everything. You can not like Apple Watch, doubt its price/performance, and doubt it has no killer function application. But keep in mind that Apple wants more than just the next generation of computing equipment, and it wants to enter the fashion industry. Yes, from fashion to inspiration, according to fashion rules, Apple is not to subvert the fashion industry, but to enter the fashion industry. Or it should be understood that Apple's future lies not in technology, but in fashion. By then, Apple Watch will be covering all high-end and low-end users, and it looks like everyone needs to wear a watch on their wrists.