During a pretty interesting quarterly earnings call with investors, we saw how much Apple made last quarter. Long story short, Apple made lots and lots of money, specifically on iPhones in China. More importantly, we found out when you’ll be able to get your hands, or rather, wrists on the Apple Watch.
Apple will be launching the Apple Watch in April 2015. The iOS based smartwatch has no more details than that other than development is coming on well and they’re seeing some pretty great apps.The story doesn’t end there as that date will likely be delayed for Irish consumers.
Unfortunately, Ireland isn’t a ‘Tier 1’ country for Apple, it’s a ‘Tier 2’ country. This means, we see product launches a bit later than normal compared to the UK and the US for example. Considering it’s tier 2 status and the amount of configurations available (watches – regular/ sport / edition, sizes and straps), we would bet on a May/June launch for the watch in Ireland if not later. Of course, there is nothing stopping you from going to Belfast to get the Apple Watch on the UK launch date, something we did for the iPhone 6 launch. Beware, the lines are very very long.
The Apple Watch starts at $349 USD which given Apple pricing should convert to €300/€350 for Irish consumers, but no pricing details have been confirmed so far for us. That’s just for the ‘Sport’ watch, the ‘Edition’ version of the Apple watch could cost a lot more as it’s made from gold. No launch date or pricing has been given for Ireland so it’s pure speculation for now.
The Apple Watch is expected to be a great companion device for iPhone users. It’s hard to predict how useful it will be as few apps have been announced but if it can match the sheer handiness of an Android Wear watch, it’ll be onto something. The Apple Watch will tell the time, connect to your iPhone, track your fitness and will run apps like Twitter so you can keep up to date on your wrist. It will also provide you with notifications, Siri access and a new form of messaging where you can send your heartbeat, drawings or vibrations to a contact. Pretty weird if you ask us!
The ultimate test of course will be in battery life. Most of the time, we’re seeing 2-days max from Android Wear devices here at TheEffect on our Moto 360, LG G Watch and Sony Smartwatch 3 devices so we’ll be keen to find out just how much juice Apple have managed to squeeze into their watch.
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