Why Apple is obsessed with gold: It's all about Asia

Take it with a grain of salt, but Jony Ive was quite adamant about why they created a gold watch - They (presumably he, marc newsom, and the rest of the design team) - love the material. We know they are among the world&#x27;s greatest experts in building personal electronics out of aluminium, (check), stainless steel is a classic watch material (check) - so why aren&#x27;t they allowed to build a gold watch just because building things out of gold is awesome?<p>I&#x27;m guessing the fact that gold is popular in China (Apple&#x27;s soon to be largest market), and probably will yield a high gross margin, probably made it straightforward to get Tim to sign off on it - but I really do believe that the initial driver was the desire to work with the material.<p>But, put it in a different perspective - pretend that <i>you</i> are in charge of the Apple Design team for their next generation product, which is meant to be <i>worn</i>, and you want it to be attractive to <i>everyone</i> in the world - what materials would <i>you</i> chose to make a watch out of?<p>I don&#x27;t know about you, but gold is pretty high up on my list.

While I&#x27;ve ever been entirely comfortable with this &#x27;theory&#x27; (as true as it might be), it&#x27;s worth noting that Apple Watch doesn&#x27;t necessarily fall into this one.<p>IMO, the gold Apple Watch was created to position Apple Watch as a luxury good, and make the cheaper models more appealing and fashionable. Just the existence of the uber expensive Edition gave the Sport and &#x27;regular&#x27; Watch more &#x27;fashion cred&#x27; for those that would care about such a thing.

Short version: China !== Asia.<p>Long version: I understand that China is a big market for Apple, but as the headline indicates, it&#x27;s not just China where people are more inclined to buy (and show off) gold products - it&#x27;s a phenomenon in many Asian countries.

For the Apple watch edition, I doubt that Apple expects it to be a large revenue driver. It&#x27;s an obvious marketing move to position the watch as a high end luxury item, to &#x27;frame&#x27; the pricing discussion, and to generate buzz. This is a technique that companies (especially aspiration luxury brands) have used forever. Set the price of your A-level item unusually high and suddenly the price of your B-level item seems like a bargain. Where other e-watch makers are struggling at the $200-300 price point, Apple is selling its C-level watch at $350 and its (probable) volume seller B-level watch starting at $549 without any problem. I think they understand the human psychology of luxury purchase decisions pretty well. It&#x27;s smart (and slightly evil), but I don&#x27;t know how this will fit in long term with the rest of their products which are &#x27;premium&#x27; but until now haven&#x27;t pushed so far into &#x27;luxury.&#x27; An iphone is slightly more expensive than an S6, but is perceived to be &#x27;premium&#x27; in some way. Apple doesn&#x27;t make diamond encrusted $10K phones even though their are luxury phone brands that do. This is new territory for Apple, not sure that I like it.

It seems absurd for consumers to store value with items that are very perishable. What do you do with your 10k watch in 5 years when Apple has stopped releasing security updates ? You&#x27;re then left with an expensive shell and a rotten core.

So much speculation going on here. Amy Hoy actually researched it (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;unicornfree.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;nobody-will-pay-10000-for-an-apple-watch-other-reasons-you-cant-sell-shit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;unicornfree.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;nobody-will-pay-10000-for-an-ap...</a>) and 10k isn&#x27;t much for the kind of high-end fashion market that will buy this. In fact it is kinda low, as Amy points out the 10k will only get you the &quot;basic bitch&quot; version of the Berkin bag.<p>Basically a) you are not the market and b) for those who are the market here 10k is not much.<p>Side note I love Amy Hoys writing and suggest you all go read her site.

I found the evidence in the article to be less than persuasive. The cited study found black to be the most luxurious color in those markets but obviously there is no black phone or black edition variant. I&#x27;ll also note that Apple has quite often historically used black without being accused of pandering to Asian tastes. No equivalent study for the west is offered as a contrast, probably because gold and silver would also be high on the list. The western designer cited as not liking Apple&#x27;s turn to gold wears ... a gold (colored) watch.

It should be &quot;all about Apple&quot;.<p>I admire the Apple design ethos, especially recently. It felt like they were trying to make the best product possible, whether I liked it or not. If you&#x27;re telling me they chose gold just for Asia, that&#x27;s pretty lame.<p>Personally I think the gold looks pretty tacky and a departure for Apple. I thought they made their own rules. Guess I was wrong. But what do I know, they&#x27;ll still sell a quadrillion of everything. It&#x27;s just a colour.<p>Happy Sunday

Apple used to position itself as a brand for rebels and bohemians. Remember the &quot;Here&#x27;s to the crazy ones&quot; manifesto? An $18,000 gold watch is pretty far from that image.<p>Of course, the rebel image worked because Apple had a tiny market share at the time. But it&#x27;s still pretty striking to see a company that built lime green laptops build insanely expensive gold watches.

thought this was common knowledge when they unveiled the gold 5s in 2013.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.zdnet.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;gold-iphone-5s-the-only-spark-among-chinese-consumers&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.zdnet.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;gold-iphone-5s-the-only-spark-a...</a>

I figured it&#x27;s all about Jonathan Ives.<p>He likes gold and it&#x27;s particular aesthetic, which is why all the new stuff has it.<p>My completely uninformed opinion is that Steve Jobs probably hated it, which is why it never existed until post-Jobs Apple.

If Apple is willing to make all of its product lines gold just to make China like it more, I wonder what else it&#x27;s going to compromise on (thinking security&#x2F;privacy here).