The $20,000 gold Apple Watch Edition sold out in China in less than an hour

Business Insider ^ | 04/10/2015 | Joshua Barrie

[SeekAndFind]

The Apple Watch Edition has already sold out in China — and it took less than an hour for the most luxurious gold version of the device, which reportedly costs ¥126,800 ($20,000) to get completely snapped up.

Today, Apple put the Apple Watch Sport, Apple Watch, and Edition up for pre-order in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, and China. Customers can now try on and buy the watches, but the company says people won't get them until weeks later in the UK — elsewhere, it could be longer. Relatively few will actually walk out of shops wearing their new accessory.

[Joe 6-pack]

"Yet Apple comes in number ONE again in customer satisfaction.

Of course they report being satisfied. Nobody wants to pay top dollar for an item and then report they were duped.

[itsahoot]

Besides, if someone gets stuck in the Microsoft trap by buying one PC thing they’re pretty much stuck having to stick with Microsoft if they want other devices to interact with what they already have.

[BunnySlippers]

Is that true of all JD powers’ top companies?

Are all of them the top selling? If not, your silly theory falls apart.

BTW, Apple has won top satisfaction surveys for decades. Even when the company was not the top of the stock market. So your theory sucks.

[Joe 6-pack]

LOL..I see my theory in practice every day.

[BunnySlippers]

So, why is it not proved in the JD powers surveys?

I see people who hate Apple as being cheapskates. True, or not?

[Swordmaker]

That’s the reason why consumers have given Apple has 93% of the smartphone market, as compared to ALL the other Smartphone manufacturers put together!

Oops, Star Traveler. Slight error. Apple has 93% of the phone PROFITS, all phone profits, not smartphone market.

[Swordmaker]

Apple's smartphone market share is expected to decline over the next three years.

They said that three years ago too. And they said it the next year and the year after.

The rest of the phone market is LOSING MONEY, CementJungle. There are only THREE phone makers making money. . . Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi. . . and Xiaomi makes a profit only by stealing the intellectual property they use to make their phones.

[redfog]

“There’s a sucker born every minute”

[Chgogal]

BS. Microsoft's death screen pissed me off one time too often. I have never had a problem with Apple.

[Chgogal]

You mean like the suckers who don ‘t own Apple stock?

[MediaMole]

They should have called it the Apple Watch Oligarch.

Who else would buy a $10k US or $20k China watch with a 4-5 year maximum lifespan? Spend the same on a Rolex and you have something to hand down to your kids.

[PreciousLiberty]

“Of course they report being satisfied. Nobody wants to pay top dollar for an item and then report they were duped.”

Apple’s phones and tablets are right in the same price range as Samsung’s comparable products, and almost everyone who upgrades through a carrier pays the same for either.

There is no “top dollar” difference. Sorry to burst your bubble.

[Zhang Fei]

But as one who's recently traveled the countryside of one of China's richest regions (within a hundred miles,or so,of Hong Kong) I can attest to the fact that 98% of the people still live like savages.

They were communicating in grunts, living in caves, running around in animal skins, gathering berries and nuts and hunting small animals?

[Zhang Fei]

Period	Samsung	Apple	Lenovo*	Huawei	Xiaomi	Others
Q4 2014	19.9%	19.7%	6.5%	6.3%	4.4%	45.7%
Q4 2013	28.9%	17.5%	6.4%	5.7%	2.0%	39.5%
Q4 2012	29.1%	20.9%	5.5%	4.6%	0.9%	39.0%
Q4 2011	22.5%	23.0%	5.1%	3.5%	0.1%	45.7%

As to "profit share", that's a silly term. In consumer tech, when your product is hot, you make money, along with a handful of other companies and everyone else loses money. When it's not, a handful of other companies make money and you lose money hand over fist along with the other also-rans. Nokia had a decade of being the king of cell phones. Motorola had over a decade of supremacy before Nokia. Apple is closing in on the end of its iPhone decade. Price compression will do to iPhone margins what it did to Mac margins in the mid-90's. Except the mid-90's Mac at least had the emerging markets to sell to, and the move of assembly operations to China, to prop up margins. Whereas the iPhone has been in the emerging markets, from both a sales and assembly standpoint, from the git-go.

[Swordmaker]

As to "profit share", that's a silly term. In consumer tech, when your product is hot, you make money, along with a handful of other companies and everyone else loses money. When it's not, a handful of other companies make money and you lose money hand over fist along with the other also-rans. Nokia had a decade of being the king of cell phones. Motorola had over a decade of supremacy before Nokia. Apple is closing in on the end of its iPhone decade. Price compression will do to iPhone margins what it did to Mac margins in the mid-90's. Except the mid-90's Mac at least had the emerging markets to sell to, and the move of assembly operations to China, to prop up margins. Whereas the iPhone has been in the emerging markets, from both a sales and assembly standpoint, from the git-go.

No, Zhang Fei, "profit share" is not a "silly term." It is the only thing that counts in the long term. Your MARKET SHARE chart has nothing to do with profit share. A company can have the largest market share and go bankrupt by selling below cost. The iPhone market has not been touched in the least by price compression in the phone market. Sorry, you are just wrong. Apple does not compete in races to the bottom. Apple owns the majority profit share position in every market they compete in for the same reason, including PCs.

[Zhang Fei]

No, Zhang Fei, "profit share" is not a "silly term." It is the only thing that counts in the long term. Your MARKET SHARE chart has nothing to do with profit share.

Actually, it does. When Motorola and Nokia were king of the hill, they had high market share and the lion's share of the profits. Their market shares shrank and those profits continued flowing, for a few years, as their products continued to be hot. Then their products went ice-cold and they started losing money hand-over-fist.

iPhones have not been affected, yet. They are still going through that honeymoon period. When it happens, it will seem sudden. But it's been a long time in coming, just as Motorola and Nokia seemed to fall off their perches suddenly. It wasn't sudden. They just gave their competition room by pricing their products too high. It's not a bad strategy for maximizing profits. But the fall from grace will not be pretty. My prediction is that in three years, AAPL shareholders will associate the good old days with a $50 stock price (without any splits, spin-offs or special dividends).

[Swordmaker]

Actually, it does. When Motorola and Nokia were king of the hill, they had high market share and the lion's share of the profits. Their market shares shrank and those profits continued flowing, for a few years, as their products continued to be hot. Then their products went ice-cold and they started losing money hand-over-fist.

But the conditions are not at all analogous. Apple has not ever had a high market share, yet has 93% of the last quarter of 2014 of ALL phone profits. You don't seem to grasp the differences in the markets. The companies you were talking about never had anything like that disparity or the longevity of such a disparity as Apple and the continued growth of Apple. NONE of the had the margins that Apple has maintained since the iPhone was released. Sorry, not the same story at all.

Your pet theory of specific cell phone companies having a Hay Day in the sun is nothing. . . and not true to history.

Nokia was killed by not moving forward with multi-touch screen technology until it was too late. Motorola didn't move into the smartphone market and stuck with the dumb/feature phone market. They just didn't move at all. Even when Apple tried to help them by making an iTunes phone with them, Motorola sabotaged the effort by limiting the number of tunes to 100. . . and refusing Apple's help on user interface. They made a "Feature Phone," because they knew better.

[Zhang Fei]

Besides, that silly profit share number was originally made up by Tavis McCourt at Raymond James (and there is really no good underlying data shown to justify his numbers, given that most smartphone manufacturers are not pure-play phone vendors and they don't generally break out their gross profit numbers). This is a guy who plugged Blackberry as a "Buy" all through a 50% plunge in the stock:

Jon Ehrlichman says: “Please correct me if I’m wrong but I was looking back over the Bloomberg and it says you’ve had an outperform rating on the stock since September 2008. That’s during period in which RIM has lost half its value while the S&P has fought its way back to even. Can you clarify that?”

Tavis’ response: “… No, that’s accurate… um… some stocks go up, some stocks go down.  They’ve done much better internationally than what I would have expected and much worse in the US.”

Betty Liu: “Right, but I think Jon makes a good point that you’ve had this outperform rating for a long time on RIM. What would it take to make you change that?”

Tavis: [now angry and somewhat dismissive of the direct criticism] “yeah yeah, look… this would be an easy job if we all just looked backwards…. But, we don’t… and, uh, and, uh, so… you know, I think what it would take would be if there was any meaningful slowing in RIM’s international growth.”

“This would be an easy job if we all just looked backwards.”   Well, Tavis, I think the point was that you’ve done a really bad job looking forward for over 2 years now.  And it’s not like he upgraded the stock and then back-tracked.  He just did nothing.  He kept saying RIM was an “outperform” for the entire ride down to a loss of half the company’s market value.  And now he says it’s still an “outperform.”  What is any investor supposed to make of that?

Why does this continue to happen?  Aside from no accountability, skewed incentives, and the basic personality types of the people who go into this line of work, there’s another factor at play.  According to Tavis’ bio on Morgan Keegan’s website, he covers 20 companies including RIM.  20!  How do you do that — really?  How can you intricately have an opinion about a company’s ups and downs amidst a rapidly changing competitive environment?  I think what Tavis did with RIM — which is exactly nothing in terms of changing his opinion — shows what happens.

The guy is throwing darts at the wall. He lucked out on his Apple recommendation. I wouldn't trust his "profit share" guesses any more than his Blackberry recommendation.

[Zhang Fei]

But the conditions are not at all analogous. Apple has not ever had a high market share, yet has 93% of the last quarter of 2014 of ALL phone profits.

If you exclude the app-less wonders like Blackberry, Symbian and Palm OS, which are more feature phones+, these are the market shares for smartphones from 2007 onwards:

Year	Android (Google)	iOS (Apple)	Windows Mobile/Phone (Microsoft)
2007[97]	0.00%	18.33%	81.67%
2008[97]	0.00%	40.90%	59.10%
2009[98]	14.55%	53.27%	32.17%
2010[99]	53.26%	36.93%	9.81%
2011[100]	69.13%	28.11%	2.76%
2012[101]	75.43%	21.74%	2.83%
2013[101]	80.68%	16.04%	3.28%
2014 Q1[102]	82.11%	15.67%	2.22%
2014 Q2[103][104]	83.31%	14.28%	2.42%
2014 Q3[87]	84.12%	12.85%	3.04%

[Swordmaker]

Besides, that silly profit share number was originally made up by Tavis McCourt

No, it wasn't and hasn't been. It has been around for a long time. The current figures come from many sources who calculate it independently. BZZZT! They do NOT come from Tavis McCourt but from the Financial reports of the companies involved. Sorry, again you are wrong. They are not "Guesses."

I don't know what you think you proved with that long rambling cut and paste, but it said nothing about "profit share." You seem to think it is an arcane calculation or guess. It isn't. Total all the profits of all the companies making cellular phones for any specific period. . . calculate the percentage for each company of that total. Voilá, Profit Share. Some companies LOST money so the percentages can total more than 100%.