“A man called Greg Koenig has had a think about what material costs are involved in the production of the gold Watch Edition are, and the results are somewhat startling,” Ian Morris writes for Forbes. “For a start, he estimates that there is 29.16g of gold in the frame. At today’s market value that’s about $1200 in gold alone. Apple may pay less, and as someone pointed out they may have a team of people buying gold when the value is lowest in a given trading period.”
“Even so, when you add in the cost of the electronics and the sapphire screen it’s quite unlikely that the Watch Edition will cost Apple less than $1500 to make,” Morris writes. “This gold version is a niche product, so the production costs will be higher as demand will be lower. Apple has also – it says – made the gold on its watch twice as hard as ‘regular’ gold. All of this points to a hefty eventual price point.”
“Koenig says in a follow-up tweet to his predicted gold content ‘If anyone thinks Apple is charging less than $5k for the Edition, they are smoking crack. Based on the gold content alone, $5k easy,'” Morris writes. “It is quite important that Apple gets the pricing right on the Watch Edition though, because reducing it later would be a really bad move from a perception point-of-view. I suspect that Apple will want to come in under $10,000 but at significantly more than $5,000. So my estimate is $8,000.”
Read more in the full article here.