“Earlier this week, I discussed how CEO Tim Cook can’t afford to swing and miss on the iWatch. His detractors already believe his time is running out,” Richard Saintvilus writes for TheStreet. “But Cook must not get hasty. And if recent rumors are to be believed, Cook may, in fact, price Apple out of a potentially lucrative market.”
“According to KGI Research analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple plans to price the iWatch at $1,000. Cook once said that for Apple to disrupt the wearable market, the product has to be a ‘must-have’ and not merely a ‘want,'” Saintvilus writes. “The watch has been rumored to have health-related benefits, including the ability to alert wearers of a heart attack. But if it’s going to cost of $1,000, it needs to also drive the person wearing it to a hospital. Although Ming-Chi Kuo does have a strong reputation for accuracy, I don’t see how this price is going to work.”
“Granted, it’s still early. But if the iWatch does crack the $1,000 mark, in trying to preserve profit margins, Apple would have missed on this one as well,” Saintvilus writes. “Not to mention, Samsung, which released its Galaxy Gear last December, already has first-mover status. And unless the iWatch has the ability to save lives, the device will be dead on arrival by pricing itself out of a market that is yet to be defined.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Relax, Richie. Relax.
Related articles:
Apple’s iWatch said to come in two sizes, high-end model to cost several thousand dollars – April 10, 2014
Apple CEO Tim Cook can’t afford an iWatch flop or something – April 9, 2014
Tim Cook is smoking crack, if he thinks anyone will pay $1000 for an iwatch. The sooner he is gone from Apple the better, bring back Forstall.
I disagree, Jobs seen something in Tim and not much has changed from what I can see with Apple since Jobs has left the world. Under Jobs Apple wasn’t putting out new products every year! This should be the year or next year of some new products from Apple. I think they need to speed up a little bit, but if the rumors are true about the iPhone 6 I bet it will be a big hit and just the right pent up demand for it. Its all about marketing as well!
Joe you’re sadly mistaken. Why do you care whether Cook stays or not?
You have zero skin in the game, I suspect and have joined all the other malcontents who are sad with their own lives in order to attack the most public figure at Apple.
Scott will return when Apple needs him and not a moment sooner.
So by that rationale, if they never need him – he will never return.
It’s not inevitable.
I said, Scott will return when it’s time.
It may not be as dramatic as Jobs’ return, but Scott has mad skills and Apple knows it.
I believe Scott left to pursue what his own inner voice was telling him about what Apple was leaving on the table.
Yes, bring back the lazy jackass who provided us with a dangerously incomplete Apple Maps! And make him CEO! Genius!
Forstall was only worth a damn because Steve wouldn’t take his shit and made him do his job right.
I’d rather have a team that makes a couple mistakes but owns up to them and fixes them than a guy who tells his superiors he has a completed product, then refuses to take responsibility when it turns out to be one giant heap of crap.
Tim was CEO, he rolled crap out without testing it. Tim should take his own advice and resign for rolling out subpar products. Somewhere between janitor and vp, excuses don’t matter. Tim should be fired.
Tim took ownership of the mistake and made efforts to fix it. Scott threw a hissy fit because Tim wanted him to sign an apology letter.
If you don’t see the difference, there’s no helping you. “I want this guy fired because he owns up to mistakes, and I want him replaced by the idiot who made the mistake and then refused to take responsibility.”
Idiot.
The mistake shouldn’t have happened in the first place. The only reason it did, is so Cook could look like a Saint as he fired his competition. Cook is a douche and should be fired.
Your self serving remarks are boring. Regurgitated crap from the paid off tech and financial press.
This is just a speculative rant. Why would you waste your time judging or condemning imaginary apple products with imaginary prices. Does anyone believe apple’s next product is a simple watch variation?
Then why would you comment on an article about an imaginary product?
He realized at last that imaginary guitar notes and imaginary vocals exist only in the imagination of the imaginer…and ultimately, who gives a fuck anyway
thank you lisa, for the only true comment to this thread, i must say that there hasn’t been any fun here since they made music illegal.
Cheers,
Be nice to have some evidence of the truth of that made up figure don’t you think before you make a fool of yourself.
But, you do know that… there are plenty of people there that have watches > $1000 right? And you will agree that selling a 99 dollar watch wouldn’t really move the stock price, right? Okay.. so far so good.
I agree.
Say it ain’t so Joe.
Noone could be that stupid.
Well, Tim isn’t that stupid, you, Joe, are dumber than a bag full of hammers.
So, some idiot pundit pulls a number out of his ass, and that’s motivation for you to say Tim Cook needs to go?
Call your doctor and get your meds adjusted.
-jcr
If you actually believe apple is going to price said still fictional product at $1000 then it’s you whose smoking crack
I hope that is just a rumor being spread by Samdung or Froogle to try and deter sales and not the actual or even close to being the price! I won’t go over $99 here for a watch!
That will have to be some watch!
I’ll watch for it … but I won’t wear things on my wrist, so count me out.
You and many like you who don’t feel comfortable about making fashion statements.
If this watch is promoted as a healthcare device, I will begin to campaign the VA to provide them to every veteran who suffers PTSD and depression.
Ah yes, this was the article that said Apple might slip into obscurity, like Blackberry. What a doofus.
Original iPhone had pricing adjusted downward. They remember. They’ll get it right.
You know, a watch is considered to be jewelry by many. Jewelry often fetches higher prices than consumer electronics buyers would pay because, well, it’s jewelry. So, if Apple were to meld consumer electronics and jewelry into a single device, why not charge $1000 for the item, or perhaps more? Why such a knee-jerk reaction to what is obviously fluff BS meant to drive eyeballs to a web page anyway? What’s to prevent Apple from having a luxury line of watches, along the lines of Patek Phillipe, and a cheaper version, along the lines of Swatch? Get over yourselves. And to imply that this “article” is evidence that Tim Cook should be ousted is absurd.
I think the high end wearable will be 499
That’s a great number. Maybe do a 499 and a ‘cheaper’ version at 399 (lower storage, etc) I heard they’ll do male and female versions.
Command-space, type “dictionary”, press return, type in afford. Note the definition does not mean what you think it means.
It’s too bad Apple has no track record dealing with shipping products that are universally believed to be overpriced. I know there must have been at least one. I wonder how it turned out.
$ 1000 is clearly luxury territory. A lot of people don’t have that much money. Early adopters and tech innovators won’t hesitate.
Below $ 700, early majority can take hold.
Below $ 500, its ready for the true mass market.
I’m sorry, did Kuo say that Apple would be pricing the iWatch at the $1000 mark? Or did Kuo say that Apple would be releasing multiple variations on/options for the iWatch, some of which would exceed $1000 for the really high-end stuff?
Because one is “OMG u guis, Apple just priced itself out of the market” and the other is “Apple is planning to create a device that will run the gamut from attainable to luxury.”
One is desirable. The other is dirty, rotten click bait.
Bingo. No need for all the histrionics here. I’d add that Apple will likely even provide a much cheaper way to access healthbook functions by including a simple band in the sensor lineup, like fitbit, jawbone, etc.
And even if they don’t do it right away, they will after a few years. I mean, that’s Apple’s M.O.: introduce the high-end version, and then slowly roll out more limited versions that 1) get people into the ecosystem and 2) upsell them to the more expensive and feature-rich devices. But they always make the high-end version first because it’s easier to make a more expensive product and then scale it back than it is to introduce a cheap product and then up the price.
I learned the hard way with the iPhone, I never buy the first generation. Paid off handsomely when I bought iPad2. It’s 3 years old and still almost state of art.
I am perpetually amazed by the amount of hot air blown in all directions about a non-existent device often called an iWatch. The entire world seems to be writing about it; I have seen articles in local press in Serbia, Russia, Bangladesh, Mozambique, Uruguay… Most of therm write about it exactly the same way they write about actually announced products by companies such as Sony, Samsung, LG, etc. And comments in the comment sections are usually along the same lines, as if this “iWatch” has already been announced. Most of the articles tend to be accompanied by some photos (which are somebody’s speculative renderings of what they think an iWatch might look like if Apple ever made it), and the article (as well as comments) spend inordinate amount of time commenting on the design and features of these renderings.
The world has gone insane over Apple.
The longer the void between product announcements and earnings reports from Apple, the louder the press becomes, and they get away with it. Apparently, people lap it up. So much more fun to trash the products Apple hasn’t announced yet than to trash them after they’ve been announced, though that activity produces no end of fun as well. It’s only after Apple announces the number of products they’ve sold that the press has the opportunity to say that Samsung sold more of them. (To say that Samsung has first-mover advantage in the wearable category is laughable to say the least.)
Useless jouranalysts lacking integrity and failing to report the facts won’t be dead on publishing, thank goodness there is a well defined market for that.
– “I had to abandon free market principles in order to save the free market system.”
– George W. Bush
Aside from the “not everyone wears a watch that much anymore.”
A watch is more than just a watch.
It embodies a component of reflection of the persons’ personality. Are you going to wear something that YOU consider ugly and crappy? Hell No.
Now a few people don’t care – and that is part of their personality isn’t it.
So there IS a VERY wide market for a desirable iWatch.
Just read about a survey that said that Teenagers would be willing to pay $350 for this “iWatch”. Think about that.
What do you think an Adult would be able/willing to pay for an 18ct gold iWatch…
They just don’t have good taste. – You Know Who. 😉
I don’t think Tim Cook or anyone at Apple would price the iWatch at such a high price. They need mass market appeal, not rich and famous appeal.
I do not think it will cost that much. Apple is not stupid like Microsoft. I feel it will have more features than the Google Gear and it will be priced right.
Let’s say the watch thing is as capable and complex as an iPhone. This is not to say that it will do the same things as an iPhone but the things it will do are Unique and Amazing.
A contract-free iPhone is about $850. Add 20% for the manufacturing difficulty of watch thing.
$1,000.
I have 7 watches. All different. All under 150 bucks. All good looking and well designed. I suspect the actual guts in them are pretty much the same.
So now we know when it is coming out, what it is going to look like and how much it is gong to cost…
For the last three (or four?) years, there has been constant talk about the upcoming announcement of the game-changing Apple TV set (not the set-top box, but an actual TV). At times, the noise was about the same as is now about this “iWatch”.
I’m curious to see how many years it will take for the noise about the immminent “iWatch” dies down.
Fact No. 1
Every time Apple might release something very new analysts always say it’s going to be priced waaaaay too high.
Fact No. 2
The iPhone was priced much higher than any other handset and still debuted to huge sales before a later drastic price drop.
Fact No. 3
Everyone was saying the iPad would have to be a $1,000 base model device and Apple came in extremely aggressive in its pricing, which sort of shocked the industry.
So I wouldn’t believe anything I read regarding the price points of a so-far mythical device by Apple. If it is priced really high, that’s because it will be great, it will be in short supply at the start and people will be willing to pay it.
I believe your facts are facts
And i believe everyone esles conjecture is conjecture, with some plain flat out bulls**t blended in for effect
I’ll just buy another Mac with $1,000 instead if the iWatch.
the whole watch thing is Dullsville.
so, this is an article written by ‘analyst one’ from ‘the street’ …..about what ‘analyst two’ from KGI Research has written ….who probably included in his own article comments and opinions by ‘analysts three and four’ …..and in conclusion climaxed with a quip of his own, thereby completing a really super article. GOOD JOB RICHARD, KEEP UP THE GREAT REPORTING.
also, …there’s a busted bottle of ketchup reported on aisle 14. can we get a mop over here..
Yet Google wants to sell people Glasses for $1500.
I can imagine many more everyday uses of an iWatch than glasses. Plus the battery won’t die after a few hours and I won’t get beaten in the men’s room.