NEW YORK: Apple has sent out invitations to an event on March 9 in San Francisco, where it will unveil details for the release of the Apple Watch, a person with knowledge the matter said.
CEO Tim Cook said last month that the smartwatch will ship in April. The device is the first new gadget line to debut under Cook since he took over the helm at Apple, as he seeks to push the company into new segments. Apple hasn’t given much information about the gadget’s battery life or how much models will cost, other than $US349 ($440) for the basic version in the US.
“Spring forward,” reads the invitation to the event, to be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater at 10am. The headline refers to the annual to daylight savings time, when Americans move their clocks and watches forward by one hour. This year, the time shift begins on March 8, a day before Apple’s event. The event’s focus will be the Apple Watch said the person, who asked not be identified because the topic wasn’t made public.
Optimism about Apple has been growing since Cook revealed the watch along with the larger-screened iPhones in September. The new phones helped fuel a record profit during the last three months of 2014. Apple shares are trading near record highs, giving the company a market capitalisation of about $US756 billion on Thursday.
The Apple Watch, with a rectangular touch-screen face, includes sensors to detect pulse rates and other health-related features and must be paired with an iPhone to work properly. It will come in two sizes and three styles — classic, sports and gold editions.
“The creativity and the software innovation going on around Apple Watch is incredibly exciting,” Cook said when he announced the watch would begin shipping in April.
Morgan Stanley has projected Apple Watch will generate $US8.1 billion in revenue in fiscal 2015, including $US1.35 billion in the March quarter, while RBC Capital Markets said Apple could “conservatively” generate $US6.5 billion in revenue from 20 million watch shipments.
Meanwhile, Apple is due to enter China’s hugely lucrative luxury watch market with the launch of the Apple Watch, which will debut at an event on March 9, the company announced this week, reported South China Morning Post.
China is a key market for Apple. Revenue from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland grew by 70 per cent in the most recent quarter from a year earlier, more than triple the growth rate in Europe and the Americas.
In October, supermodel Liu Wen appeared on the cover of Vogue China wearing the Apple Watch, one of the device’s first major publicity campaigns, and one in which Apple’s chief designer Jony Ive and Cook were intimately involved.
“[They] talked me through how they developed the concept of the Apple Watch from the beginning, I was impressed by their thoughts and passion for the project,” Vogue China editor Angelica Cheung told Business of Fashion.
When Apple introduced a gold version of the iPhone 5S in 2013, it was widely seen to be courting the Chinese market, with great success. Prior to the device’s official launch in Beijing, gold models were reportedly selling for upwards of US$4,000. In Hong Kong, mainland Chinese gold bugs queued for hours outside Apple stores in the city to get their hands on the gilded iPhone.
Unsurprisingly then, the Apple Watch will come in gold. The 18 karat Apple Watch Edition is expected to retail for more than US$5,000.
With more than one million units expected to be in production per month, some estimates suggest that the Edition could use as much as a third of the world’s gold supply.
“If Apple makes one million Apple Watch Edition units every month, that equals 24 million troy ounces of gold used per year, or roughly 746 metric tons,” writes Josh Centers of Apple news site TidBits. “If Apple uses 746 metric tons every year, we’re talking about 30 percent of the world’s annual gold production.”
Luxury watches are big business in China. The value of Swiss watch exports to the mainland has increased from 16.8 million Swiss francs in 2000 to 1.6 billion in 2012. According to Deloitte, mainland China and Hong Kong are now the top export market for Swiss watches, though sales have dropped somewhat since Beijing launched its anti-corruption drive.
The Apple Watch is courting Chinese consumers with more than just bling however. While reaction to the company’s “digital touch” technology – which allows users to draw commands and messages on the screen with their finger – was largely muted in the West (Cult of Mac called it a “silly gimmick”), it could be key to the device’s success in Asian markets, where many users are already more accustomed to drawing characters than typing them.
“The killer app for the Apple Watch is the Chinese language,” said Stefan Geens of mobile app design firm Aventyret. “The rest of us are forced to draw fishes and hope nothing gets lost in translation.”
Meanwhile, Apple Watch will replace your car keys and its battery will last the whole day, Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook told the Telegraph in an interview.
The watch is designed to replace car keys and the clumsy, large fobs that are now used in many vehicles, Cook told the newspaper.
Its battery will last the whole day, and will not take as long to charge as an iPhone, the report quoted Cook as saying.
Apple Watch will also work as a credit card through Apple Pay, Cook told the paper, but did not mention how user verification will work with the watch.
The rollout of the watch might pose a challenge for Apple’s stores, which may involve “tweaking the experience in the store,” the Telegraph said, citing Cook’s conversation with the staff at Apple’s Covent Garden store in London.
Last March, Apple unveiled CarPlay, which lets drivers access contacts on their iPhones, make calls or listen to voicemails without taking their hands off the steering wheel.
Earlier this month, Reuters reported that the iPhone maker is looking at making a self-driving electric car, and is talking to experts at carmakers and automotive suppliers.
In the interview, Cook said that the Apple Watch will operate a special rewards system, track the user’s activity and “be correct to 50 milliseconds.”
Apple was not immediately available for comment.
The company has scheduled a special event on March 9, where it is expected to showcase Apple Watch, which will be launched in April.t