Will Apple Let Users Upgrade Apple Watch Internals?
It might be difficult for investors to imagine a world where consumers line up at the nearest Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) retail outlet for an upgrade instead of an entirely new product. Believe it or not, that could be the future for at least one new Apple device.
“I think most of the improvements will occur in the internal guts of the watch,” Sean Udall, CIO of Quantum Trading Strategies and author of The TechStrat Report, told Benzinga. “Effectively, a watch is a watch. Apple can literally upgrade a few key components inside.”
Udall said that the processor and the battery will need to be included in that upgrade.
The battery angle is credible and has some precedent. But the rest of this nonsense — and it is utter nonsense — has been making the rounds ever since the consumer tech world took it upon itself to justify or rationalize the cost of Apple Watch Edition in terms of a market segment that can’t afford it (and for whom the thing isn’t even designed). I can’t think of a single luxury brand that will offer to inexpensively and meaningfully upgrade part of something it sold you just because a new, better version of that something came out. That’s antithetical to how the luxury world operates. Luxury is disposable, and it is funded with disposable income. That is the entire point.
As for the more affordable versions of Apple Watch, the above reality is largely the same. Why would Apple change its well-established habits — never mind its fundamental guiding principles — to purposefully limit its capacity to generate huge manufactory profit margins? Apple Watch is already extremely complex to assemble, its much-hyped modularity notwithstanding. Does anyone actually believe it would make sound financial sense for Apple to add disassembly and selective component replacement to the equation? Also, why do people have the totally unfounded idea that Apple Watch’s design is finalized for the long term? How long has iPhone ever kept the same form factor? Or iPad? I’ll tell you how long: one upgrade cycle. Two years. That’s it.
Why should Apple Watch be any different? In the mobile realm, component electronics are so small and advanced and powerful that most of the mass market’s desire to upgrade is predicated not on the need for increased performance but on the simple, visceral desire for the different aesthetics of the new model. Apple Watch in two or three years will look different than Apple Watch today, and the internal structure of its thinner chassis will utilize components that won’t be designed for any sort of retrofit into older, differently-shaped pieces of kit. Plus, if Apple was going to voluntarily cannibalize its own profit potential, they’d have simply made Apple Watch less expensive in the first place.
That some folks expect Apple to reward its customers for not buying its newest products is equal parts amusing and bemusing.
I doubt Apple’s likely to be that stupid.