A Few Reasons For The Apple Watch Discount
At a handful of select stores, Apple is dropping the price of its wearable if customers pick one up alongside the purchase of a new iPhone. Unfortunately, however, there’s no indication of exactly why Apple’s doing this, and there might be several individual or co-existing reasons for the move.
First and most obviously, critics will claim that the price-drop is tied to “flagging sales” of Apple Watch, but I think that’s probably not the main driver behind the program. Indeed, I’d reckon that Apple Watch sales are surprising even Apple itself as the company’s likely moving more units than expected by now.
A second possibility — and a more reasonable one taken on its own — is that Apple is simply field-testing a forthcoming holiday promotion. With the Apple TV having just come out and the iPad Pro primed for shelves any day now, it’s going to be a big, expensive gift season for Cupertino, and that attention could be parlayed into “Apple Watch as add-on” to a not-insignificant segment of the fence-sitting population.
A third explanation might speak to more permanence: This is the iPhone + Apple Watch Bundle. As the wearable was never intended to replace iPhone (and never will be, ridiculous articles notwithstanding), this sort of model makes sense. I even think Apple could eventually find it’s way to offering iPad and iPod bundles, too, provided those ever actually support the thing (which seems like an inevitability).
Fourthly and finally, this might be Apple taking baby steps towards refining its actual Apple Watch sales strategy. I am, of course, talking about Bands. Remember, this discount only knocks $50 off the purchase of a Sport or standard Apple Watch. That’s not a heck of a big price drop, as it amounts to nothing more than most customers getting a free Band. Apple ran a similar “test” — or, at least, felt similar limitations — at launch, when it offered its least popular color combo for immediate shipment to developers even as all other variants were backlogged a month or more. In other words, maybe Apple’s realizing that pre-selected, mandatory Band choices aren’t a great product mover, and this is their way of tracking accessory sales tied to the discounted Apple Watch. If a user buys his 42mm Apple Watch Sport for $350, maybe he also buys the Band he really wants at the same time (or shortly thereafter). This could, in theory, be a preliminary move towards Apple doing the most obvious thing ever and selling Apple Watch bodies by themselves. There’s little downside to that, as most users aren’t going to immediately go third-party, particularly for Sport models.
All in all, I wouldn’t read any more than what I wrote into this two-week promotion. No matter how its characterized or what Apple’s super secret rationale is, you can count on two things: One, bundles will be a thing, and two, Apple Watch is doing OK.